there, not there

Abstract

For us, “writing off the beaten track” has been propelled by collaborative study of ontoepistemological contributions that break the constraints of western knowledge-making. Black studies and women of color feminisms prompt us to pause long enough to breathe … to interrogate the ellipsis … to sit in the space between words or the dangling punctuation. What’s there (or not there) creatively points to ideas, questions, and methods that subvert the primacy of the western colonial imagination. Our collective writing has often come to us by being worked and reworked, fused and refused in an iterative process, this time with fahima ife’s Maroon Choreography. From homonyms to a wordplay on tracks/tracts, we discuss a writing praxis that has been contoured by radical study and scholarship “actively straying from” disciplined/disciplining conventions. There is always more to knowing and articulating subjects, contexts, and the pursuit of justice.