"The possibilities that come from totalizing, universalizing, westernizing, heteropatriarchal, capitalist, and racializing…
“The possibilities that come from totalizing, universalizing, westernizing, heteropatriarchal, capitalist, and racializing dichotomies come from their cracks. These are the cracks of the dichotomies between either getting ourselves expelled from or included into a colonial system of oppression, or between the superiority/inferiority, white/brown-black, interiority/exteriority, inside/outside. However, cracks are often ignored, passed unseen, or forgotten “because of the myopic nature and naturalization of modern life and living”. It is our intent here to demodern ourselves and see the fissures of the totalizing concrete of westernized educational institutions in family therapy, from within. If we can see the cracks, the oppressive system is no longer totalizing. A nontotalizing system, in turn, makes it possible to recognize the value of western knowledge as one parallel to many other possible knowledges.
Through the ruptures, not destruction, of the system we see the hurt but also the light of possible allyships with white people and their accountability—from some of them, at least. I (marcela) can also see the meaningful life-changing learnings from white men mentors I came across during my doctoral studies; or the powerful encounters among the included people into the institution that might have otherwise never taken place as it would have been the case for us (authors). But to see the cracks and the light that shines through, a movement from epistemic obedience to epistemic mischief or insurgence toward epistemic liberation might be required. Such movement, in turn, requires learning to unlearn institutionalized universalist knowledge to relearn pluriversal knowledges that come from our communities and ancestries, as in the decolonial alternative.
– Decolonially Speaking, Sensing, and Thinking: Racialized Tuition-Based Family Therapists Learning Without Teaching, by marcela polanco, Pankaj Kumar (पंकज कुमार), Fraol “Frada” Olyad, and Claire Henry Enemark