Anyway, All The Dogs Are Howling a POSSIBLE FUTURES Podcast Exploration 1: Basics Conversation 5: Words Mean Things More on this POSSIBLE FUTURES podcast at https://decolonise.possiblefutures.earth/anyway Luiza Oliveira: Hi, this is Luiza Oliveira, and you are a fly on the wall here amidst [the] POSSIBLE FUTURES Collective. It is intriguing, and sometimes disturbing, to see how many people get lost in confusion when some terms are used when talking about coloniality and decolonisation. Language and words have many meanings and are used differently depending on the culture, time and context. Coloniality perpetuates a hegemonic pattern, meaning that it tries to reduce complexity and assume the One World perspective of things, as if this limited vision of reality is the only truth, fostering polarisation and objectification of everything that defies the colonial perspective. Coloniality is hiding in plain sight, and through the use of terms in a certain way, people are encouraged to understand history and dynamics through certain lenses, without too much questioning. Since in hegemonic culture there is only one right way of seeing things. But what does hegemony actually mean? If you look at an English dictionary, you will find that hegemony means dominance and leadership influence by one nation over another, or aggression or expansionism by nations in an effort to achieve domination. So in general, when looking at these definitions, people might associate hegemony with military dynamics. But through time, we observe that hegemonic dynamics are more insidious than that. And these specific dynamics are reproduced beyond military activity. For example, you can find hegemony being posed through propaganda, education, agriculture, healthcare, and so on, promoting one way of knowing, being and doing. With that in mind, many people reproduce hegemonic perspectives without realising they are doing it, since that has been the reality valued around them. The reality that they learn to understand and to adore. Then when questioned and defied about it, people tend to get reactive and defensive, since they learn to associate their own identity with hegemonic structures and narratives. This is only one example of how people reproduce hegemony without realising, and often when questioned about it, many get confused about how hegemony is perpetuated in their context. But let’s try to keep it simple. What are the other examples of terminologies that you see people getting confused by that benefits coloniality without people realising it? How does coloniality benefit from misusing and misappropriating words? And what are some of the colonial traps that people get stuck in when going through terminologies? - Samantha Suppiah: It is impossible to talk about the term “hegemony” without mentioning Italian Marxist philosopher, linguist, journalist, writer, and politician Antonio Gramsci. A sickly child, he was plagued by various disorders throughout his life. His experience of industrialisation was influential in his thinking during his time at the University of Turin. He joined the Italian Socialist Party in 1913, and thus began his political career. He developed his writings in socialist newspapers as a journalist and became the editor of the official Socialist Party paper after the mass arrests of Socialist Party leaders in 1917. In 1922 and 1923, Mussolini's government cracked down against opposition parties again, leading Gramsci to make moves seeking to secure the splitering Socialism movement in Italy. In 1926, Gramsci himself was arrested and sentenced to 25 years' imprisonment. By the 11th year of his imprisonment in poor jail conditions, his health had severely declined. His teeth fell out, his digestive system collapsed so that he could not eat solid food ... he had convulsions when he vomited blood and suffered headaches so violent that he beat his head against the walls of his cell. He eventually died in 1937 at the age of 45. Gramsci's famous Prison Notebooks narrate Italian history and nationalism, advancing important ideas in Marxist theory, critical theory and educational theory such as, but not limited to, cultural hegemony. He advocated for absolute historicism, an approach to understanding social and cultural phenomena by studying the process or history by which they developed, i.e. a competence for recognising and understanding cultural evolution. In his view, the bourgeoisie develops a hegemonic culture using ideology rather than violence, economic force, or coercion. This is the reality behind the term "cultural hegemony": real experience rooted in solidarity and sacrifice, not privilege and comfort funded by stolen wealth. POSSIBLE FUTURES are not Marxists, for Socialism does not lead to decolonisation. But Gramsci gave us a term that describes precisely the power structures that we observe and are governed by, and helped us to define more clearly - in our colonisers' languages - our decolonial demands for indigenous rights and diverse cultural sovereignty as a result of land, food, energy and national sovereignty, where "the nation" refers to self-determined ethnic groupings. When terminologies are misused in ways that disrespect their origins, that is called co-optation. Co-optation is about minimising and neglecting the strife and struggle of the lived experiences of the ones who fought and died to enunciate the ideas behind the words. It exposes the ignorance and impunity of the speaker or author, and this is even more dangerous when they are not held to account by awake, aware and learned philosopher roles taken up by real people with real experience, with real skin in the game. People with honour, integrity and conviction. Obviously, this is an extinct class amongst Gen Xers and Millennials in hot pursuit of extractive capitalist profiteering. In Gen Z, however, it's a different story. - Anna Denardin: We often assume that confusion around terminology is a byproduct of complexity. But in colonial contexts, confusion isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. In this process, terminology can become a trap, floating further from its historical and political roots, and closer to what Lélia Gonzalez, Brazilian author, activist, teacher, philosopher and anthropologist called "the whitening of the discourse." She exposed how dominant Brazilian institutions, including academia, media, and even progressive movements, produce a sociolinguistic space where Afro-Brazilian culture and resistance are systematically devalued or appropriated, while the appearance of harmony is preserved. Abdias do Nascimento took this even further. In both his activism and intellectual work, he insisted that Black Brazilian culture had to be recognized not as “diversity,” but as civilizational projects violently suppressed by colonization. His critique of epistemicide, the killing of knowledge systems, shows us that coloniality is not just about stolen land and labor, but about stolen language, knowledges and worldviews. What Samantha pointed to in her reflection on co-optation is very important, as colonial systems tend to assume that talking about something is the same as doing something. It absorbs the critique and metabolizes it into the system. Think of how fast institutions move once a buzzword becomes fashionable. They host webinars on decolonisation with the same budget that funds extractive projects. As Abdias do Nascimento reminds us, a word must walk. It must be rooted in accountability and action to mean something. — Luiza Oliveira: Exactly. Coloniality imposes cultural hegemony and epistemicide when it misuses and misappropriates words. Another way to disseminate and cultivate cultural hegemony is when people get lost in semantics. This makes me think of when Fanon criticises the intellectuals who position themselves only at an abstract level, being incapable of making durable contact with their peers in his book Black Skin White Masks. And this is something that you both mention that I think is important to highlight here. Decolonisation is grounded in experience, in context, in practice, and how we relate to others, to our various environments, and to ourselves. As Anna said, in a colonial context, confusion is a feature. And disconnecting context from meaning is how coloniality creates its narratives and justifications. Beyond the term hegemony, a term that I have the impression that many people use without fully understanding the many ways it manifests in their contexts and how harmful it is, there are many other terms that cultivate cultural hegemony. Development, empowerment, freedom – are a few of the terms that without looking, or without identifying the power dynamics involved in the situation when they are being used, are sold as a sign of good intentions for the benefit of a greater good, and more often than not continue to perpetuate coloniality. Because what they often mean is development of some at the cost of many, empowerment of a few, and freedom as a synonym of lack of accountability. — Samantha Suppiah: Terms like development, empowerment, freedom, democracy, meritocracy... These are all words used, introduced and popularised by the elite classes to justify civilisational or imperial systems maintaining their status as elites. They are words that benefit the minority elite by subjugating every other perspective, every other culture, every other language, every other reality. In our capitalist global order, all these words have something to do with monetary profiteering to some extent. Development for example, denoting advancement, progress, betterment - but usually referring to concrete urbanisation, Western infrastructure systems, and alignment with a Western progressive ideology. There is funding for all these things, via development banks or international NGOs. It comes with a financial incentive. If you want to pursue any other definition of "development", it's an uphill battle filled with booby traps and ambushed mercenaries. "Democracy" is another, with a particularly intense ethnocidal flavour. Usually denoting fairness, equality, and representation. But actually meaning electioneering to set Western standards, with highly curated, permitted or censored discourse via tight media control, weaponisation of the judiciary, the obscurement of political tactics like gerrymandering, and the inherently unfair overpowering of specialised or minority needs and demands. Again, there is funding for certain allowable or certifiable modes of so-called "democracy", and not for others. "Meritocracy", drenched with compliance sauce. Usually associated with performance, skill, talent, and hard work – and being rewarded for such things within the system, usually with greater responsibilities, or greater influence. This is in reality little more than an incentivisation mechanism for a slave trapped within a system designed to extract labour out of bodies and minds in service of corporate profiteering. Modernity celebrates intellectualisation over embodiment. Optics over actions. What do words even mean when meaning is not realised? Academic semantics in the real world is a massive red flag for me. It's an extremely accurate indicator of incompetence and inexperience in actual on-the-ground realities and the practice of interventions in those realities. This is what happens when folk are so far removed from reality, sitting in ivory towers creating inconsequential theories based upon hegemonic narratives that eventually get picked up by powers that be, whose profiteering interests happen to converge. The Western progressive claims to uphold values of "diversity, equity and inclusion", but must police language and semantics because one word, in their minds, can only have one meaning, regardless of contextual realities. And yet across the Global South, conversations held in the real world are full of meaning-making arising from immediate experience, using words, phrases and metaphors that will never be understood or respected by those who erroneously brand themselves "intellectuals". - Anna Denardin: I think there is something very important being unpacked here about how colonial systems manipulate and weaponize distraction in order to perpetuate confusion. Another word that I see strategically stuffed with cotton and sold back as revolutionary is empowerment. The word has become so bloated with TED Talk optimism that it’s practically floating away. Institutions love this one. It may sound nice, but who is doing the empowering? And within what system? Colonial hegemony is still the good, true, right way forward and because it is still the one setting the terms of empowerment, it still maintains the power to decide who to include and who to exclude, this approach to change does not disrupt hegemony. In fact, this approach reinforces hegemony. More often than not, the word is used by institutions to make people feel like they have agency, when in fact, they’re still operating within the confines of a colonial or capitalist framework. Now let’s talk about “voice.” Another darling of the NGO-industrial complex. “We want to uplift voices. Center voices. Give voice.” What does that even mean? First of all, people have voices. The problem isn’t the absence of voice, it’s the presence of very selective listening. Or “resilience.” That’s another big one. Especially in development and aid circles, you’ll hear about making communities “more resilient.” But what’s rarely acknowledged is that the resilience being asked for is to withstand the very systems that created the harm in the first place. And that’s the trap. Coloniality weaponizes distraction and ambiguity to avoid accountability. It stretches, blurs, and rebrands language so we end up debating semantics while the same extractive systems grind on, uninterrupted. So maybe our task isn’t just to define our terms, it’s to track their behavior. Watch how they move. Who uses them, and in what contexts? Do they open space or shut it down? Do they redistribute power or just soothe its rough edges? — Luiza Oliveira: I think there is something so important in what you both shared about speech and power dynamics that goes so beyond the terminology being used. And it goes back to what we were mentioning before about feeling and understanding what is being said connected to experience, embodiment, context and history, as you understand who is going to benefit from what is being said, and who is going to be harmed by it. What is being perpetuated? What is being dismantled? Who is allowed to speak in that way? Who is actually being heard? And why? Often, coloniality takes advantage of the trauma it has inflicted to offer “solutions” to those most harmed that not only is not going to offer reparation or either acknowledge its harms, but it’s going to try to cultivate further dependency. It is important to stay tuned and develop critical feeling together with critical thinking while listening to people speaking, because more often than what I would like to admit, I found myself feeling the dissonance in the discourse first, but only after I was able to recognise, name and understand the abusive power dynamic behind what was being said. I know that the more we learn and practice to identify and understand these dynamics, the faster we get in speaking up at the moment, and challenge them more strategically. — Samantha Suppiah: Words have meaning connected to lived experience. Folk with no life experience of difficulty, strife, inequality, or injustice have no idea what words really mean. When many in the Global South grow up with such realities, trust that they have their own words. These realities are present only because the global elite receive systemic privileges. This is our colonial world order, in which globalised white supremacy culture operates through words. This is why it matters who it is who gets to say what, and why words folk use say a lot about how they identify themselves and the power structures they align with and curry favour from. This is a huge problem within the so-called broad political left, which is just another facet of our colonial world order – the facet that seeks to make colonisation more comfortable for the colonised, by performing solidarity on the surface by stealing words, stripping them of meaning, tone-policing how words are used, and taking advantage by profitting via social, political and financial capital. The epistemicide of colonial co-optation, the whitening of the discourse, is extremely dangerous when unchallenged and allowed to proliferate. Global South perspectives, ideas and knowledges are stolen, not properly credited, and misused without permission or consent by the privileged and the elite within our colonial world order. It's insane to me that we are having to explain this. Words are not to be taken lightly. Exercise respect and consent. — POSSIBLE FUTURES Crew: This is Luiza Oliveira. This is Samantha Suppiah. This is Anna Denardin. Anyway, all the dogs are howling.