Communicating creativities: interculturality, postcoloniality and power relations

Abstract

Lingering legacies of colonialism continue to disrupt the postcolonial condition of Southern spaces including their ontologies, knowledges and creativities. The interdependence of modernity and coloniality further constructs a complex array of overlapping systems of exclusion and marginalisation. In particular, the parameters of the coloniality of power, knowledge and being influence how artistic expressions and creativities are unequally appreciated in cross-cultural situations. The restrictive hegemony of Western-Northern artistic theory maintains the status of the periphery as derivative or exotic in some cases. Although colonialism inculcated the modernising consciousness in the imagination of the colonised, Southern creativities’ attempts to join modernity have not often been successful as they remain situated within the margins of the Western grand narrative of modernity. This paper examines (a) how cultural differences in creative expressions are shared, received and interpreted across borders in an intercultural experience; (b) the influence of imbalanced power relations on artistic productions and the communication of creativities; and (c) the contribution of postcoloniality and decolonial knowledges in resisting the Western artistic hegemony and granting visibility to Southern creativities. The main argument here is that communicating creativities is bound into power relations.