Writing from the position of storyteller allows for the voice of those historically denied a knowing-subjectivity to be onto-epistemologically expressed beyond the logics of enunciation, representation and punitive justice (Vázquez, Citation2020). Instead, I draw from the deep well of a ‘coalitional ancestry’ (Garcia, Citation2020) which has long used storytelling as a means of ‘affirmative decolonising critique’ (Motta, Citation2016, p. I refuse, for in this meditation on the discomfort felt while writing the strikethrough paragraph above, it has become clear that claims made by the individual ‘authoritative I’ seeking punitive justice, is devoid of liberation. I refuse to fall prey to the ‘authoritative I’, I refuse performing the prophetic intellectual (Motta, Citation2016), I refuse being held captive by pain and fear, I refuse us vs them. As Adrienne Maree Brown points out in We Will Not Cancel Us And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, ‘Call outs elicit both a consistent negative and dismissive energy, and a pleasurable take-down activation, regardless of what the call out is addressing’ ( Citation2021, p. This ‘authoritative I’ is sharp, witty, callous, vengeful and adept in the art of critiquing and is quick to weaponize ‘call-outs’ in claiming punitive justice. It is an initial process of purging the remnants of the modern individual subject we are trained to become from pre-school, which we ‘master’ in university (see Sheik, Citation2020). Footnote 3Įach time I sit to write academically, I have to perform an exorcism of the ‘authoritative I’ (Vázquez, Citation2020, xxv). Below is the first attempt to write this article, a paragraph that I reluctantly show you, a paragraph rewritten three times in one week, each time sharpening the blade. So, I am choosing to share with you the hesitation in writing, to reveal that our choices need not be shrouded in edited versions saved in unmarked folders, but can rather be used as a pedagogical tool to mark absences but not be defined by them. That as an imperfect women of colour vitriol can seep into my words, such that my actions become divisible from our abolitionist dreams, for I know that the words trapped here in this paper will far outlive this pain and anger. That the anger, frustration and impatience stemming from pain and fear, will destroy the very path I’m trying to make to you. Writing this to you now, I Footnote 2 write with discomfort, as I sit with and try to hold with compassion and kindness one of my unthinkable thoughts.
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