Abstract
This paper begins by exploring the anti-colonial work of Tunisian scholar Albert Memmi in his classic book The Colonizer and the Colonized and determining whether the characteristics of colonization that he names can be successfully applied to the current relationship between modern humans and the “natural world”. After considering what we found to be the five key characteristics: manufacturing the colonial, alienation and unknowability, violence, psychological strategies (bad faith), and language, history, and metaphor we draw clear parallels, through selected examples, to the exploitative relationships enacted in many realms of the modern human/nature relationship. In so doing the paper posits that the beings that comprise the “natural world” are colonized. It then continues from that position to explore the possibility of cultivating practices of listening to the voices of these colonized others to inform anti-colonial ecopedagogy as allies. We employ the term “shut-up” as an anti-colonial gesture to remind ourselves as much as others of the importance of first listening to the colonized other before engaging in “post-colonial” theorizing about prospective relationships or liberatory solutions “for” them. Given the fast-paced and cacophonic urban life many humans increasingly inhabit, and the disciplined and reiterative practice(s) required to learn to listen to other voices, we suggest caution and care when importing postcolonial theory into “environmental” contexts and seek to instigate further discussion as to how we might enact solidarity with other beings as anti-colonial allies in education. To this end, we conclude the paper with some educational implications based on research at a place-based school and focus on the role history, language and metaphor play in manufacturing a colonial relationship, but also provide a potential means for changing relationships with the diverse beings with whom we share the planet.
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This is not to suggest that the colonized did not respond to colonization before this North African conversation initiated. For as long as colonization has progressed, the colonized have resisted in myriad ways. The point here is, first, the emergence of the language of anti-colonialism and the systematic process of naming its operating mechanisms and, second, the role anti-colonial literature from North Africa (e.g. Memmi, Fanon, etc.) played in later discussions with respect to anti-, de-, and post-colonialism.
The concept of nature, the environment, the wild, etc. as a colonized other is not necessarily a novel or original discussion. For example, ecofeminists such as Carolyn Merchant and Val Plumwood have made such claims for decades, not to mention myriad Indigenous scholars who bring a critical inquiry lens to a diverse range of land/place-based ontologies (see Winona Duke, Leanne Simpson or Philip Deloria). The link with Memmi was already suggested but not developed by Plumwood (2002). Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang illustrate this position claiming, “…the postcolonial pursuit of resources is fundamentally an anthropocentric model, as land, water, air, animals, and plants are never able to become postcolonial; they remain objects to be exploited by the empowered postcolonial subject” (19). This paper is novel, however, in trying to draw parallels directly between the anti-colonial work Albert Memmi and relationship between colonizing humans and colonized others.
The hope is that the space Memmi inhabits and speaks from, amongst and in-between, might already resemble or come to comprise the kind of space that we as human thinkers who are striving towards non-anthropocentric ways of being might also inhabit and speak from.
It is important to note that there is obviously not a “pan-human” orientation to the natural world and our focus will be on those privileged humans who are, by and large, the descendants, beneficiaries and adaptive acolytes of the same colonizers Memmi describes.
The language available to indicate and illustrate the spectacular range of beings (animate and inanimate) that comprise the world is incredibly tricky territory and part of this challenge, as the paper will explain, is in fact embedded in the imperialistic ethos of the colonial position. We have chosen here, quite inadequately, to use several terms in the hopes that we can first, begin to undercut the hierarchical separation of human and the rest of the world (e.g. nature/culture, human/non-human, human/other-than-human, human/environment) and second, acknowledge that the world is made up of countless species and even more unique individuals. As this paper claims, hierarchizing and amalgamating myriad individuals into single grouping is a classic colonial strategy. As such, we have chosen to pluralize wherever possible with the goal of breaking with human exceptionalism and the lumping of all non-humans into a single category over and against human.
Tuck and Yang (2012).
The colonizer here refers predominantly to a human of the modern Western tradition in the global North, but there is certainly a culture, privilege, and gender conversation to be had with regard to the particular nuance of this category.
It should be noted that “shut-up” is a potentially violent assertion that can lead to closing down and not listening and educators should be aware of this. The point of using it here is to capture the reader’s attention but also to make it clear how serious and important it is for colonizing to stop and to begin engaging differently with the many others that inhabit this planet.
Affifi (in press).
Wuerthner et al. (2014).
Migliori et al (2000).
To further the tragicomedy; humans have often responded by deepening the problem as they try to “solve their own mistakes”.
Derby (2015).
Memmi himself has this blindspot with respect to nature, as well, it would seem, with respect to women.
For an interesting discussion on both the “culture” of different bird species and the impact of human conservation work to ‘protect’ the whooping crane on the lives of sand-hill cranes (Van Dooren 2014).
Mills (1999).
Blenkinsop and Piersol (2013).
Piersol (2015).
Gilligan (1982).
Sartre (1992).
Gilligan (2011).
For a more in depth discussion see: Piersol (2015).
He chose this pseudonym at the beginning of the research project when he was in Grade 4. The second scene occurs when he is in Grade 6.
These two moments come from the fieldwork of Dr. Laura Piersol and are part of several upcoming publications as well as her doctoral thesis.
Hamilton (2010).
Andruss (1990).
Blenkinsop and Piersol (2013).
The NEST program at Davis Bay school is a second research site (http://www.sd46.bc.ca/index.php/nature-program). Teachers and students spend at least half of every day outside and actively cultivates the idea that the natural world is a co-teacher.
This is a reference to Foucault. For a more in-depth discussion of this concept in reference to the environment and education see: Blenkinsop (2012).
Affifi (2016).
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The original version of this article was revised. The last author name was misspelt. The correct name is updated in the article.
An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11217-017-9565-4.
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Blenkinsop, S., Affifi, R., Piersol, L. et al. Shut-Up and Listen: Implications and Possibilities of Albert Memmi’s Characteristics of Colonization Upon the “Natural World”. Stud Philos Educ 36, 349–365 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-016-9557-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-016-9557-9