The Re-membering Experiment
The larger project employs community engagement; dialogue; film; excursions/exchanges; indigenous healing modalities and community led process architecture to reimagine ourselves re-membered. The experiment will focus on the following activities:
Unearth experiences, narratives, stereotypes and norms of dis-memberment which have emerged overtime between people of colour
Engage through dialogue and creative exhibition the ways we as people of color experience, give meaning to and perpetuate dis-memberment of one another through “intra-black” violence
Create space to pilot with a cohort of community members a collective healing process of re-membering
Document our lessons, experiences and perspectives throughout the experiment 5)Engage in a cross community impact mapping and imagining exercise where initiatives and interventions to challenge intra-black violence may emerge
I believe that through this experiment we may be able to bring to the fore the various ways that intra-black reconciliation may be linked to community health, mental health, social and economic development, gender equality and most importantly cohesion.
PROBLEM ANALYSIS
The dis-memberment of communities of colour takes on layered forms. When speaking about intra-black violence, I mean interpersonal violence, hate speech, self hate and racialized violence which remains an uncured plague within our communities. Dis-memberment in this scenario refers to the ways in which we have been ripped limb for limb from our own bodies, psyches, kins and collective selves. Re-membering here is the movement toward healing, critically engaging and putting ourselves(individual, collective and imaginative) back together.
Being dismembered from indigenous language, culture and heritage has left a huge portion of the population with a displaced sense of belonging. Conflicts surrounding identity and history based on racialised categorisations of people’ have led to ongoing intra-black violence and have left many estranged from one another across the continent and the diaspora.
Intra-black violence also takes on the form of crime, violence and harm perpetuated against one another. All of the above are results of colonial strategies and tools for division and conquering.
These impacts have resulted in devastating psychological and capacity wounds for marginalised people of colour both on the continent and in the diaspora. Our capacity for participation and ability to navigate peace, healing and justice for one’s’ self and for one's' people has severely been diminished. Despite living within a “post colonial” era, laws, economic systems, racial classification systems and social norms remain key drivers for upholding the colonial infrastructure. In most “post colonial” societies, there has been a lack of genuine, deliberate and meaningful “Intra black” reconciliation efforts.
Impact
Expanding to national, regional and international environments with similar experiences and contextual realities. Turning experiences into direct actions which challenges anti-black structures, systems, laws and norms. Turning situated solidarity and shared experiences into recommendations, models and drafts for policy and change interventions
A South Africa where black and coloured communities are deliberately, consciously and actively forming situated solidarities to build, heal and collaborate across racial lines.
A tested model that may be replicated transcontinentally to dismantle intra-black violence
A powerful, critical mass of people of colour transcontinentally collaborating, organising and creating self determined non violent realities for themselves and future generations.
