Black texts on white paper: Learning to see resistant texts as an approach towards decolonising planning

Introducing the idea of resistant texts

The Canadian scholar of subaltern literature, Ann Chinnery (2008), asks us to imagine a scenario in which we are invited to a dinner party at a colleague’s home. We show up at the appointed hour with a bottle of Pinotage and a bouquet of Strelitzias in hand. (Prior to purchasing these gifts we establish that Pinotage is our host’s wine of choice, and that she adores Strelitzias.) As we make our way up the garden path we hear the sounds of music, laughter and lively conversation coming from within. However, once we reach the end of the path it isn’t clear where the door is. We walk around the house, but still we cannot find a door. We peek through a window and we see our host with her other guests gathering around the dinner table. Try as we may – by politely tapping on a window and then resorting to calling out – we simply cannot find a way into the party.

Chinnery equates this theatrical scenario with Doris Sommer’s (1994: 524) description of resistant texts that establish a seemingly ‘impassable distance between the reader and the text, thereby raising questions of access’. Resistant texts resist dominant narratives in ways that are unfamiliar, or entirely foreign, to the untrained eye. As such, they resemble a form of epistemic disobedience that produces an uncomfortable and oft-unacknowledged incompetence (Dei, 2014; Mignolo, 2007, 2009; Nyamnjoh, 2007). Yet, ‘years of privileged training add up to a kind of entitlement to know the text’ (Sommer 1994: 524). And for most of us who are educated within privileged (or what I refer to as Western ¹ ) ways of knowing, we simply cannot accept that some things will remain unknowable (unless we decolonise our minds). In fact, we are trained, and we train others, to know the text.

Resistant texts are most often found in endogenous ways of knowing (epistemology), being (ontology) and acting (axiology). For the purpose of this article, I conceptualise endogenous systems of knowledge production as resistant texts. The twofold objective of this article is then, first, to affirm endogenous onto-epistemologies and axiologies so that we may learn to see resistant texts before attempting to arrive at alternative planning outcomes, and, second, to initiate a project that may begin to address South African students’ heartfelt call to decolonise the academy. To these ends, I purposefully make use of the term ‘endogenous’ as opposed to ‘indigenous’ because, as argued by Francis Nyamnjoh (2007, 2012), ‘endogenous’ evokes the dynamism of knowledge production that allows for authentic specificities while acknowledging that different bodies of knowledge influence each other. Endogenous also serves to ‘counter the widespread misrepresentation of African knowledges as static, and in need of coloniality’s rationalism to come alive’ (Nyamnjoh, 2012: 136). Furthermore, in the post-apartheid era the use of isiZulu, isiXhosa or Sesotho words such as ‘ubuntu’ and ‘lekgotla’ are simply inserted into planning policies without reference to their epistemic values. Indigenous terms have thus become empty signifiers devoid of real transformative potential (cf. Sihlongonyane, 2015). By contrast, resistant texts – as everyday expressions of endogeneity – might serve not only as ‘tools to understand relationships of power and systems of oppression, but [also as tools] to transform them by resisting them’ (Kessi and Boonzaier, 2016: 122, my emphasis).

In fulfilling the first objective, I remain acutely aware of my own privileged position as a white scholar, and the challenges and limitations this position presents. I therefore cannot, nor will I attempt to, speak from a body-political standpoint, which is,

Neither about the mere pursuit for an essential black subject, nor an identity politics as some would have us believe. Rather, black scholarships are about an embodied learning with and through racial [and other intersectional] identities. Above all else, this is a scholarship of and by resistors and survivors. (Dei, 2014: 168, my emphasis)

A scholarship of and by resistors and survivors does not, however, preclude white scholars from being invited to a dinner party: To learn to see, respect and affirm resistant texts as an-other way of knowing and doing. But this learning arguably necessitates a project of decolonising the mind, which speaks to the second objective of the article.

Decolonising the mind, in turn, begins with an awareness of the philosophical spaces from where we think and interpret the ‘the world’, because our epistemic location tends to shape how we know (epistemology), the nature of being in ‘the world’ (ontology) and the ethical values we adopt to justify our planning actions (axiology). ² Thus, for example, in many African systems of thought, epistemology is based on experiential, socially interpreted and relational knowledge (Dei, 2000; Nyamnjoh, 2012). Ontological positions entail an holistic understanding of nature, culture, society and spirituality, while axiological positions are informed by certain core values that prioritise responsibilities over rights, and the needs of the community over the needs of the individual (Dei, 2000). Importantly, ways of knowing, being and acting in different geographical regions across Africa are understood as recursively interlinked conditions that are cumulative in nature, and that cannot be analysed as separate philosophical conditions, as is often the case in Western philosophy (Dei, 2000). ³

Coming to know the philosophical spaces from where we think and interpret ‘the world’ might then allow for a more conscious understanding of how and why knowledge continues to be produced in a particular manner, while different ways of knowing, being and acting continue to be dismissed as ‘invalid’ or ‘unscientific’ (Amadiume, 1997; Dei, 2014; Nyamnjoh, 2012). Decoloniality, accordingly, aims to counter the idea of ‘an acceptable’ way of knowing and doing, and it does so through the use of resistant texts that dare to deviate from ‘the established rules of scientific practice’ (Smith, 1999: 53). Conceptualising endogenous knowledges as resistant texts is not, however, an attempt to ‘collude in the reproduction of hegemonic knowledges’ (Dei, 2000: 129). Nor does decoloniality mean ‘a rejection of Western knowledge’ (Smith, 1999: 39). Rather, decoloniality entails one approach towards appreciating pluri-versal, as opposed to uni-versal, knowledge claims while remaining cautions of tendencies to romanticise endogenous knowledges (Abu-Lughod, 1990). In order to begin to see and affirm ever-evolving endogenous knowledges found in resistant texts, I draw extensively on African scholars. ⁴ This is not to infer that decoloniality is an African project (or ‘problem’). It has relevance in other geopolitical contexts (including Northern contexts). My focus on Africa – and in particular the Western Cape of South Africa – stems from my geopolitical location.

But let us briefly return to Chinnery’s metaphor by replacing the idea of a dinner party with a planning scenario. Accordingly, we are invited by residents to participate in a community-defined project. As we make our way up the garden path we feel some sense of confidence in our knowledge, even if this is a new project with a new group of residents with whom we hope to plan through social-learning processes. (In other words, we know when to arrive, where we need to be and what to bring to a dinner party.) Above all else, we reject any form of outsider arrogance by embracing ideas of engaged scholarship that include reciprocity and a deep respect for local knowledge. (We know that our host will not be offended by gifts of wine and flowers that are locally sourced). Continuing up the garden path, we are excited to learn that our Southern and ‘insurgent’ planning initiative is drawing much interest. (We hear the sounds of music, laughter and lively conversation, and we see through the window that there are many guests who are actively participating in the party). Yet regardless of our purposeful embrace of planning values such as ‘equity’ and ‘socio-spatial justice’, we simply cannot find a way into the party. (We are unable to adequately address a community-defined problem even by means of walking around the house, tapping ever so carefully on a window, and, eventually, calling out. And we simply cannot accept that we are ill equipped from the get-go.) Such was our experience with community leaders and residents from two adjacent informal settlements in Cape Town, namely Barcelona and Europe.

Here, in Barcelona and Europe, we knew that ‘people’s abilities to participate in [planning] activities are not only dependent on state priorities and provisions, but are also negotiated through everyday interactions between people’ (Kessi and Boonzaier, 2016: 117). What we didn’t know is that within this everydayness there existed the use of resistant texts – as a means of planning – to resist prevailing systems of domination and exclusion. This nuanced form of resistance was foreign, peculiar and even invisible to our Western ways of knowing despite our use of Southern and ‘insurgent’ modes of planning. Decoloniality, in turn, would have assists us in seeing and learning from such texts. But more on this story, later.

For now it is important to state that I will attempt to present this article as an initial foray into resistant texts by adopting a less conventional style of academic writing. As such, the narrative weaves its way back and forth and at times it does so without obvious ‘signposts’. I also make use of metaphors, extensive endnotes and a colloquial form of writing. In the spirit of resident texts, this article precludes the use of a more formal introduction and conclusion, as the aim is to disrupt a few conventions. I therefore ask the reader to embrace some degree of tolerance with the writing style, as I am still learning how to decolonise my mind. ⁵

Decoloniality as an option towards seeing, and learning from, resistant texts

Decolonial, postcolonial and Southern planning scholars begin their intellectual projects with a similar concern: The geopolitical dominance of knowledge production in the global North. Their collective task includes unsettling dominant theories by arguing in favour of value-laden and situated knowledges. In so doing, this group refrains from masking the epistemic location from where they think:

[By contrast,] the Western tradition [of knowledge production] is a point of view that does not assume itself as a point of view. In this way, it hides its epistemic location. By hiding its epistemic location, Western thinking paves the ground for its claims about universality. (Grosfóguel, 2009: 11; cf. Makinde, 1988; Oyewumi, 1997)

And since decolonial, postcolonial and Southern planning scholars reject universal grammars (Mbembe, 2001), the production of knowledge is for them always partial, fragmented, idiosyncratic and located in a politics of difference that goes ‘beyond minor empirical variations’ (Watson, 2016: 37), but that is, nevertheless, shaped by long histories of colonialism and imperialism (Roy, 2015). All three intellectual projects are therefore purposefully geared towards redressing the political world order by paying attention to the historical forces that continue to shape different geopolitical regions, and by producing knowledge through embodied voices and marked locations (Connell, 2014; Hibbard, 2017; Porter, 2010; Roy, 2015; Sandercock, 2004; Ugarte, 2014; Watson, 2016; Yiftachel, 2006).

However, decolonial thinking parts ways with postcolonial and Southern planning projects on one significant point: The onto-epistemological and axiological foundations of how we know and interpret ‘the world’ (Masolo, 1994; Mudimbe, 1988; Oyewumi, 1997). I refer to this parting as a friendly separation, since from a decolonial standpoint all modes of knowledge production are valid. ⁶ Said differently, the prerogative to discard, falsify, debunk or decide between competing normative theories through a war of words is a distinctly Western approach to academic work that decolonial scholars distance themselves from (Eze, 1997). But why should this parting of ways matter?

As postcolonial or Southern scholars, myself included, we begin our projects ‘from different sets of assumptions than those found in mainstream thought’ (Watson, 2016: 33). Yet, the philosophical lenses and the methods we use to collect, analyse, synthesise and interpret our research findings remain rooted, whether knowingly or not, in Western systems of thought. With this statement I’m not suggesting that there is anything wrong with the use of ever-evolving and sophisticated Western philosophies and research methods. Rather, my aim here is to draw our attention to the fact that while we may refrain from masking our epistemic locations, many of us continue to interpret our located thinking through a global relational perspective for the purpose of worlding our research (cf. Connell, 2014; Roy, 2015). As a result, we unavoidably inhabit Eurocentrism (Oyewumi, 1997), and we unwittingly become engaged in projects of ‘re-inscribing only one privileged position’ (Smith, 1999: 24).

‘Postcolonial theory was born in the traps of postmodernity, and it is from there that Foucault, Lacan, Derrida and others have become points of support for postcolonial critique’ (Mignolo, 2011: 52). ⁷ These traps equally apply to the Southern turn in planning theory regardless of whether scholars embrace insurgent modes of planning, or hope to pay attention to conflicting rationalities and the spatial logic of ethnocracy. ‘Postcolonial [and Southern] theories [are] then not so much way[s] of interpreting the post-colony, as method[s] for interpreting the West’ (Roy, 2015: 205, my emphasis). As such, many of us employ comparative, ethnographic, case study and other Western-established research methods, while drawing on Nietzschean, Polanyian or neo-Gramscian analytical frameworks, for example, in order to theorise from the South.

For Legesse (1973), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1986) and Oyewumi (1997), our privileged education, whether obtained in the global North or South, effectively socialises us as Western thinkers. To counter this reality, many African scholars distance themselves from ‘being identified within contemporary intellectual movements – such as postmodernism, critical realism, feminism, or even post-colonialism – since each of these movements uses alternative methodologies devised within the context of Western cultures’ (Hallen, 2002: 91). ⁸ Yet regardless of this distancing, in planning theory we encounter ‘an onto-epistemological [and axiological] problem’ that we cannot seem to escape from, because most of us are ‘Eurocentric in this theorising sense’ (Mufti, 2005: 473):

It is [therefore] important to distinguish [between] social and epistemic location. Just because one is socially located on the opposite side of power relations does not automatically mean that one is thinking [and interpreting] from a subaltern epistemic location. The success of the political world order is the making of [Southern] subjects that think, epistemically, like the ones in dominant positions. (Grosfóguel, 2009: 14; cf. Mudimbe, 1988)

Decoloniality, on the other hand, aims to shift our thinking ‘from defences against, corrections of, or attacks on Western scholarships to straightforward: Africa speaks’ (Hallen, 2002: 92). And since decoloniality harbours no ambition to establish a competing intellectual position, it is possible for African scholars to claim that ‘we all reason in all cultures’ (Sogolo, 1993: xv), while simultaneously claiming that there are ‘cultural factors that condition the form in which reasoning is manifested’ (Sogolo, 1993; cf. Gbadegesin, 1991; Makinde, 1988; Serequeberhan, 2000; Wamba-dia-Wamba, 1994; Wiredu, 1996). The conceptual notion that ‘we all reason’ – because we ‘all share a common humanity’ (Gyekye, 1995: xiv) – while acknowledging that ‘Africa is a complex terrain with complex histories, whose societies cannot be collapsed into a grand explanatory master narrative’ (Nzegwu, 1998: 5), speaks of a type of epistemic disobedience that desists from establishing a binary between the idea of ‘a common humanity’ and the idea of ‘located thinking’. ⁹ Yet in Western thinking this unorthodox integration between what is assumed to be a universalist standpoint versus a relativist standpoint poses an uncomfortable philosophical impasse.

Moreover, the tendency to systematically classify philosophical concepts for the purpose of organising knowledge into distinct properties has become a hallmark of Western scientific reason. As a result, many Western thinkers tend to establish analytical binaries between nature and culture, theory and practice, the physical and the metaphysical, the mind and the body (Nyamnjoh, 2012). ¹⁰ In contrast, decolonial thinking emphasises an integrated understanding of these philosophical concepts that are often separated for analytical purposes in Western scientific endeavours (Fanon, 1967; Gaztambide-Fernández, 2014; Mignolo, 2011; Smith, 1999; Wynter, 2001). In order to craft epistemic narratives that are not limited to Western scientific reason, South American decolonial thinkers pull the time horizon of Western modernity back to the 15th century – namely, to an era that precedes the emergence of the modern state, secular ideologies and the rules of scientific practice (Bhambra, 2014). ¹¹

By pulling the timeframe on modernity back to the European Age of Discovery, we may begin to see the origin of decolonial thinking as a counterpoint to the Iberian conquests and the Dutch East/West Indian Companies’ exploitation, thereby revealing a genealogy of decoloniality that is altogether different from a Western genealogy (Quijano, 2007). But the original Quechuan decolonialists were never allowed to share the table of discussion with the likes of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, or Locke (Mignolo, 2009). The same can be said of later era African philosophers such as Anton Wilhelm Amo (1703–1765) and Ottobah Cugoano (1757–1791).

Nevertheless, in the African context the Dutch East Indian Company established colonies only on the island of Mauritius (in 1638) and in the Cape (in 1652). In order to trace the origins of decolonial thinking in other African regions we would need to pull the timeframe back to the Roman invasions of Carthage in 149 BCE, and the Berber and Arab conquests of the Maghreb in 647 CE. A 15th-century timeframe is, arguably, less relevant to much of African that has endured at least two millennia of foreign invasions.

What is relevant to the African context is that modernity, from a Western philosophical standpoint, has its roots in ‘the Enlightenment’: A moment in European history that spanned the 17th and 18th century, and that encompassed the relegation of endogenous knowledges to an age of myths, folklore, oral traditions and ‘primitive’ science (Smith, 1999). This was a blanketed relegation that applied equally to endogenous European systems of thought (including, for example, Basque, Komi, Sami and Samoyedic knowledges), and to endogenous African onto-epistemologies and axiologies. Instead, what counted as ‘valid’ knowledge in the then new era of scientific reason was an ability to classify, evaluate and represent ‘things’ for the purpose of characterising, ordering, comparing and synthesising ‘the world’ into neat, observable packages (Dei, 2014; Nyamnjoh, 2012). These were the ‘rules of practice’ that instilled the idea of scientific rigour (Nandy, 1989). And these ‘rules of practice’ also applied to the concept of space, in the sense that space could be demarcated, mapped and measured (Smith, 1999). Space was thus ‘viewed as something to be tamed and brought under control’, something to be arranged and owned, and ‘something that was represented in accordance with the spatial image of Western modernity’s values’ (Smith, 1999: 53).

The need to compartmentalise, order and measure ‘things’ for analytical purposes also paved the way for social Darwinism a century later. ‘Societies were viewed as a “species” of people with biological traits, and “primitive” societies could be ranked according to these traits’ (Smith, 1999: 49). So while this age of scientific reason sparked the beginnings of post-Westphalia ethics, ¹² social Darwinism served to dehumanise anyone who was deemed to be ‘other’. And while England, France, Germany, Belgium and Italy were not yet colonial powers in Africa during the 16th and 17th centuries, when they became so, they reinforced Western modernity’s epistemic values.

The Enlightenment serves as a pivotal moment for the expansion of Western thinking in all its ramifications – from instrumental rationality to poststructuralism; from liberalism to Marxism; and from socialism to hyper-liberalism (Appiah, 1992; Mignolo, 2000; Serequeberhan, 2000). ‘Planning [in turn] is inextricably linked to the rise of Western modernity through fundamental processes of domination and control’ (Escobar, 2010: 145). Above all else, the expansion of Western thinking has become extremely effective in seeding a unidimensional understanding of scientific rigour to which most scholars of the contemporary academy are tethered (Dei, 2014; Hall, 1992; Nandy, 1989; Nyamnjoh, 2012). What counts as ‘respectable’ knowledge necessitates academically acceptable processes of framing, interpreting, synthesising and representing data, while dismissing anything that does not make sense in accordance with these processes, including resistant texts (Nyamnjoh, 2012). These, then, are the ‘rules of practice’ that remain, for the most part, unaltered even when Western systems of thought make allowances for paradigm shifts that are often radical in nature, like, for example, Western feminism, post-colonialism or Southern planning theories. ¹³

Decoloniality, on the other hand, presents us with an altogether different option for entering philosophical debates, and for learning to see resistant texts (Mignolo, 2011). It does so by affirming pluri-versal ways of thinking and doing, since pluriversality resembles a world that accommodates many worlds (Abraham, 1962; Appiah, 1992; Mbembe, 2001; Mbiti, 1970; Mpofu, 2014; Nyamnjoh, 2012; Serequeberhan, 2000; Sogolo, 1993). But these ‘many worlds are not only liberal, conservative, Marxist, et cetera worlds, for all of these solutions leave intact the logic of coloniality’ (Mignolo, 2011: 49; cf. Mudimbe, 1988). Decolonial thinking cannot ‘come from existing philosophies and cultures of scholarship’ (Mignolo, 2000: 64).

Decoloniality also allows us to interpret the contemporary political world order (or ‘the colonial matrix of power’) from a viewpoint that makes an unambiguous distinction between colonialism and coloniality (Quijano, 2007). So while the European colonial era has officially ended in Africa (and elsewhere), it is a misnomer to assume we are living in a post-colonial moment in history. In the same way that the colonial project was legitimised through the racialisation of colonial subjects, the current structure of globalisation – which includes how and by whom knowledge is produced – is legitimised through powerful political and economic systems that are complicit in maintaining coloniality (Kessi and Boonzaier, 2016). ‘Coloniality [thus] remains alive and well in the current structure of globalisation’ (Mignolo, 2000: 82). ¹⁴ Decoloniality’s response to globalisation is to promote an epistemic de-linking from Western categories of thought: ¹⁵ An epistemic disobedience that is found in resistant texts (Mpofu, 2014; Mudimbe, 1988; Serequeberhan, 2000; Wamba-dia-Wamba, 1994): ¹⁶

As is well known, a room looks altered if you enter it from a different door. However, of the many doors through which one could have entered the room of philosophy, only one was open. The rest were closed. (Mignolo, 2000: 65)

What might we infer from Mignolo’s allegory? Returning to our dinner party metaphor, perhaps we need to stop searching for doors, and, instead, learn to see and affirm windows as a means of access. Yet, our intellectual socialisation requires us to find doors, because accessing a party via a window isn’t an accepted norm. The task of de-linking from accepted norms, if taken seriously, is an unsettling leaning process that necessitates a willingness ‘to be uncomfortable. To be disquieted at a deep and profound level’ (Ugarte, 2014: 408).

How might planners begin a project of de-linking from Western categories of thought?

One option available to us is to draw inspiration from knowledge systems that pre-date Western modernity. Yet, as we know, knowledge systems are often dynamic, nuanced, open-ended and subjected to exogenous influences. ‘Endogenous knowledges do not sit in pristine fashion outside of the effects of other knowledges’ (Dei, 2000: 113). It might therefore be counterproductive to engage in ‘an archaeological enterprise of digging up the past, [since] Africans are actively endogenizing modernity and modernizing endogeneity’ via the use of resistant texts (Nyamnjoh, 2012: 137). Rising to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s (1986) challenge to decolonise the mind might then require ‘a careful navigation between the endogenous and exogenous in Africa’ (Nyamnjoh, 2012: 137) by paying closer attention to how resistant texts reveal de-linked ways of knowing (epistemology), being (ontology) and acting (axiology) in situated contexts (Masolo, 1994; Okere, 1983; Okolo, 1991; Oyewumi, 1997; Sogolo, 1993; Wiredu, 1998).

To this end, I am currently revisiting and rethinking a planning project that I have already written much about (cf. Bassa et al., 2015; Winkler and Duminy, 2016; Winkler, 2013, 2018), but that continues to challenge my onto-epistemological and axiological standpoints, for, until recently, I remained utterly perplex (if not disheartened) by our failed proposals despite their grounding in Southern and ‘insurgent’ planning theories. Opportunities to begin to understand how and why our well-intentioned project with residents from Barcelona and Europe failed to meet their expectations came as a result of an exposure to the literature on decoloniality, which, in turn, revealed the idea of resistant texts. But since I’m still learning how to decolonise my mind, and how to see resistant texts as an alternative mode of planning, discussions presented below represent only a few initial findings. Perhaps it would be more prudent to wait until I have completed the study on resistant texts before hoping to publish some of its findings. However, such a study might never be completed. Initial findings are thus presented for the purpose of inviting debates on a topic that is under-theorised, if not invisible, in planning. ¹⁷

By way of some background information before turning to our story, Barcelona and Europe are adjacent informal settlements located on state-owned land in Gugulethu, Cape Town. ¹⁸ This land was used by the municipality for two decades as a solid waste disposal site. When the landfill site was closed in 1987, it was neither sealed nor capped. As a result, the land is contaminated and pollutants are seeping into the Cape Flats Aquifer. Methane, carbon dioxide and other noxious gases pose a threat not only to residents’ health and safety, but also to the municipality’s future water source. This is a significant concern in a water scarce region. Nevertheless, Barcelona and Europe have become home to 14,692 residents of whom 84% self-identify as amaXhosa and embrace Xhosa onto-epistemological and axiological standpoints that are dynamic in nature. Despite the presence of environmental hazards, residents’ priority was, and remains, to obtain security of tenure so that they may continue to live in Barcelona and Europe without fear of being evicted from the site by the City of Cape Town.

Learning to see resistant texts

As alluded to via the use of Chinnery’s party metaphor, we – a group of black and white folks who are, for the most part, conditioned as Western thinkers – were invited by residents to engage in a community-led settlement upgrading project. ¹⁹ Our self-defined role as the university partner was to assist residents in legitimising their rights to the city. ²⁰ As such, we began the project by scrutinising the South African planning legislation for legal loopholes that could accommodate tenure security through communal land-ownership rights. Yet while such loopholes were identified, residents remained unconvinced by our rights-based proposals that we justified from our epistemic standpoints. In the end, our multiple efforts over a 3-year period failed to meet residents’ security of tenure expectations, because residents resisted our proposals to rehabilitate the land prior to the implementation of engineering services and permanent housing structures. In previous iterations of this story, I assumed our proposals were simply ‘rejected’ by residents in ways that other planning proposals are rejected by clients or community groups. Upon further reflections, and with some understanding of decoloniality in mind, I have now come to appreciate how resistant texts were used by residents as a means of planning in ways that were far more subtle, but equally effective, in their everyday struggles to resist relationships of power. Let me explain.

From the get-go, we fell into the trap of assuming that land ownership is not individualised or privatised, but regarded instead as a communal resource; as this tends to be the case in traditional Xhosa practices. This tendency is also emphasised in local Southern theories. What we failed to realise is that there exists in Barcelona and Europe an active modernisation of endogeneity with regards to land-use rights. Here, land-use activities – including residential, business, mixed-use activities – are owned by individuals, albeit via an extra-legal form of ownership that is not recognised by the state. Obtaining this form of ownership entails various stages of negotiation amongst all residents until a consensus is reached by all before community elders grant individual land-use rights (interview, community leader, November 2016). Land-use rights are also only granted with the spiritual blessing from ancestors (interview, community leader, November 2016). Necessitating consensus amongst all, in addition to necessitating spiritual guidance, before planning decisions are made speak of an axiological position that prioritises the needs of the community over the needs of the individual. It also speaks of a philosophical standpoint that is de-linked from Western utilitarian conceptualisations of ‘the common good’ or ‘the public domain’, since residents’ conceptualisation of consensus is altogether different from Habermasian interpretations. The idea of reaching consensus through compromise – or that someone is excluded from negotiation processes due to unequal power relations – is unthinkable in Xhosa axiology. This incredulity stems from an holistic understanding of the concept of ‘equity’ (ulingano or amalungelo in isiXhosa), which encompasses the ‘natural rights of every adult to be free and equal in relations to all other adults of the community’ (interview, community leader, November 2016). ²¹ ‘Natural rights’, in turn, are bestowed upon individuals by the ancestors when individuals become adults. ‘Freedom’ and ‘equity’ – which are interchangeable ethical values in Xhosa axiology – are then understood as naturally occurring conditions amongst all adults of a community (interview, community leader, November 2016). These conditions inform how adults relate to each other via their ancestrally bestowed responsibilities towards each other. By contrast, in Hobbes’, Locke’s, Hume’s, Bentham’s or Stuart Mill’s strands of utilitarian liberalism, ideas of ‘freedom’ and ‘equity’ are understood as separate rights-based conditions that are bestowed by the state, and that concern an individual’s obligations to the state and not, necessarily, an individual’s responsibilities towards other individuals of a community. As a consequence of the axiological values found in Barcelona and Europe – that include processes of endogenizing modernity – land-use negotiations can take years before a consensus is reached among all. But our blanketed communal land-ownership proposal ignored the presence of individual land-use rights, and it undermined established consensus-reaching processes. Plainly stated, we were ignorant of the presence of resistant texts that seamlessly weave their way between modernising endogeneity and endogenizing modernity.

Furthermore, residents were convinced that threats to their health and safety from methane and other noxious gases were nonsensical concerns. At no point during the 20 years of living in Barcelona and Europe had they experienced negative impacts on their health or safety as a result of contaminants. Residents, accordingly, maintained that these threats were little more than a political ploy used by the municipality to justify its eviction standpoint. At this juncture, it is worth noting that the City of Cape Town perceives its role from a Western utilitarian standpoint, which is to safeguard ‘the common good’ by protecting residents from health and safety risks, while simultaneously protecting the region’s future water sources. This ‘common good’ is defined by the municipality as a ‘good’ for as many rates-paying citizens as possible, thereby re-inscribing only one privileged position that nullifies informal residents’ rights to remain on the land. Yet regardless of the City’s position of power, residents have, for 20 years, resisted the municipality’s standpoint by purposefully de-linking from it. Here, de-linking arises from residents’ established presence on the land, as well as their impassioned ‘belief in their destiny to live in Barcelona and Europe (and not elsewhere) as guardians of the land’ (interview, community leader, November 2016). This ‘destiny’ is bestowed by the ancestors (interview, community leader, November 2016). Post-apartheid planning policies and legislation are however mute on the subject of ‘destiny’, ‘guardianship’ and ‘ancestrally bestowed rights’.

Nevertheless, 2 years after the completion of our project, I reconnected with a community leader in order to learn why residents dismissed our findings that confirmed the presence of contaminants. What I learned is that ‘knowledge’ (ulwazi, inyaniso) in Xhosa onto-epistemology only arises from first-hand experience (interview, community leader, November 2016). And since residents’ first-hand experience of living in Barcelona and Europe precluded threats from contaminants, these threats were our university-based ‘opinions’ (uluvo), derived from second-hand geotechnical data and engineering surveys (interview, community leader, November 2016). In Xhosa onto-epistemology second-hand sources of information are subjective opinions that may be true. But they may also be false. Thus, if we had hoped to ‘upgrade’ our subjective opinions to intersubjective knowledge (that is based on experiential, socially interpreted and relational knowledge in Xhosa onto-epistemology), we should have demonstrated via first-hand experiments how contaminants pose threats to health, safety and the City’s future water source. Above all else, this lesson spotlights how resistant texts (found in Xhosa onto-epistemologies) led to planning outcomes that challenged taken-for-granted ‘wisdoms’.

At the time of the project, however, we were unaware of decolonial thinking that could have assisted us in seeing the resistant texts at play in this context. All we could see from our Western interpretations of the problem under study was an epistemic conundrum between knowing how to address the future water needs of the region, and knowing how to address residents’ security of tenure needs. In response, we resorted to our established rules of practice that included identifying, demarcating, mapping and measuring alternative sites throughout the metropolitan area for permanent relocations. But residents were even more resistant to these proposals than to our contaminated land opinions, because one overt source of power they possess over the state rests in the fact that they have occupied the land since the early 1990s. ²² Relinquishing this power by moving from the land was therefore not an option for residents. This led to yet another planning proposal that accounted for more piecemeal, but less effective, land rehabilitation efforts. Accordingly, we established a phased programme of action that entailed identifying and mapping strips of land for incremental rehabilitation, as well as identifying and mapping existing sites within Barcelona and Europe for temporary relocations, so that vacated land parcels could be rehabilitated before households returned to their original plots – for which spatial layouts were also drafted through collaborative design processes. ²³

For the residents of Barcelona and Europe, the philosophical idea of ‘socio-spatial justice’ (ubulungisa or amalungelo) is enshrined in Xhosa values of generosity (isisa), honesty (ukunyaniseka), dignity (isidima) and respect (intlonipho). Planning proposals that necessitate the dismantling of homes, moving, imposing on others, and eventually returning to a rehabilitated plot of land upon which another home needs to be erected, are violations of these values, and hence violations of ‘socio-spatial justice’ in Xhosa onto-epistemology and axiology (interview, community leader, November 2016). Residents’ use of resistant texts thus served to counter our ignorance. And they did so by managing our access to information, by demoting community leaders who were willing to participate in our collaborative design processes, by distracting us with requests for financial compensation for their time spent on the project, and, ultimately, by resisting our proposals altogether (cf. XX, 2013 for details).

In Barcelona and Europe, we find approaches to planning that remain, for the most part, invisible to Western-trained practitioners, for such approaches are altogether different from, or foreign to, established rules of practice. And by the very nature of how such approaches resist dominant narratives – through the use of onto-epistemologies and axiologies that seamlessly weave between modernising endogeneity and endogenizing modernity – they may be conceptualised as resistant texts. Assigning extra-legal land-use rights via consensual practices that include a role for ancestral guidance, deriving knowledge on how to plan from first-hand experiences, and purposefully de-linking from Western conceptualisations of ‘the common good’ or ‘the public domain’, all speak of a socio-economic and spatial organisation that allows residents to access resources that they would otherwise not be ‘entitled’ to from a legal and conventional planning standpoint. Furthermore, such findings allow us to seek different reasons for why planning in a post-apartheid context continues to deliver scant transformative outcomes.

But the use of resistant texts as a means to resist outcomes that are ignorant of local needs and practices is not unique or isolated to the Barcelona-Europe story. Resistant texts may be found in other contexts across the globe (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2014; Grosfóguel, 2009; Mignolo, 2009; Oyewumi, 1997; Smith, 1999). Learning to see resistant texts – and how these texts operate at the intersubjective, experiential, relational and representational levels – might then open new windows on how we think about the production of human habitats, how we engage and collaborate in community-based projects, and how we theorise planning in Southern (or other) contexts. Resistant texts produce and maintain important symbolic and material resources by disrupting and destabilising power dynamics and systems of oppression (Kessi and Boonzaier, 2016). Above all else, they allow us to revision planning as an anti-colonial project that is de-linked from only Western ways of knowing, being and acting.

Still, and by way of a concluding remark, I am asked by reviewers and students alike: How might resistant texts lead to different planning interventions? My honest answer: I don’t, as yet, know. But our privileged education socialises us to find answers to research questions posed. It socialises us to know and to posit ‘scientifically sound’ alternatives to the things we are ‘criticising’. A key feature of coloniality is its totalising impact that snares endogenous systems of thought in a double bind: Either endogenous philosophies are so similar to Western philosophies that they make no distinctive contributions. Or, they are so different that their philosophical value remains in doubt by Western philosophers (Fanon, 1967). Thus, for now, I still need to learn how to see and affirm resistant texts as valuable philosophies in their own right, before attempting to arrive at alternative spatial outcomes than the ones currently implemented in South Africa.