Dismantling the ‘Self’: A Decolonial Approach Towards Collective Liberation
Let us begin with a recurring sentiment that we continue to come across as we navigate some of the darkest times in our recent history.
“Protect yourself,” they say.
“Don’t obsess with the news,” they insist.
“Look away,” they imply.
But for us, as women of colour, the privilege to turn away doesn’t exist. We see in Palestine, Sudan, and Congo our own struggles too. We see our constant fight against systems and structures that continue to dehumanize us. But there’s more. We’re also reminded in this fight of our interconnectedness. That our only way out of this mess, and towards liberation is through collective and community care.
As WOC, it so often feels like the weight of the world falls on our shoulders, impacting every single aspect of our lives, including how we show up at work. So what do we do? How do we get up each day, and continue? How do we sustain ourselves, maintain momentum, so we can continue to fight, empower, and resist?
For us, the answer sits at the heart of these struggles as anti-colonial movements. This means we must adopt decolonial practices that push us towards centring collective care; one that seeks to understand the intersections of all our causes. It is only then that we can achieve liberation for all.
Feminist activists and scholars such as the likes of Audre Lorde, bell hooks and Sara Ahmed have outlined frameworks that continue to serve as guiding principles in our pursuit of community care. Their work and legacies lay out for us a roadmap that provide us with the tools we need to dismantle colonial, western, capitalistic, and patriarchal structures in place of something far more collective.
Illustration by Liu Liu
Towards Community Care
In White Feminism has Forgotten Women of Colour, community organizer Lina Juarbe Botella writes that “white feminism harms us all. It does not allow us to think of the we.” Botella highlights a key point. She outlines the individualism that white feminism ultimately promotes. It is through its investment in the ‘self’ that it fully neglects the we.
This carries over to the way politics of care is practiced, and certainly the way the notion of ‘self-care’ has been reduced to self-indulgence rather than the revolutionary concept that Black feminist Audre Lorde meant for us.
In the epilogue of A Burst of Light Lorde writes, “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Lorde draws a comparison between her personal experiences with cancer and anti-black racism in America. She writes, “the struggle with cancer now informs all my days, but it is only another face of that continuing battle for self-determination and survival that Black women fight daily, often in triumph.”
“When we’re told to look away, consider ourselves first, and prioritize our own struggles, we’re no longer engaging in self-preservation. We are indeed choosing self-indulgence. And so, dismantling the self in pursuit of collective care and liberation becomes a decolonial act, and a deeply revolutionary choice.”
Here, Lorde connects the personal with the political. But more importantly, as Sara Ahmed argues in Selfcare as Warfare, Lorde “defends self-care as not about self-indulgence, but self-preservation.”
According to The Feminist Joy Toolkit self-care is a “profound act of resilience and resistance” and for Lorde who coined the term, self-care is “an intentional and revolutionary practice that acknowledges the interconnectedness of personal well-being and societal change.”
And yet, there’s an argument to be made that self-care has been white-washed and appropriated, reduced to bubble baths with a glass of wine, spa days with your besties, or hot yoga and a green smoothie to follow. And in this, the self – in capitalistic and colonial fashion, has become so heavily centred that the collective is fully dismissed and ignored.
When we’re told to look away, consider ourselves first, and prioritize our own struggles, we’re no longer engaging in self-preservation. We are indeed choosing self-indulgence. And so, dismantling the self in pursuit of collective care and liberation becomes a decolonial act, and a deeply revolutionary choice.
It’s clear to us that Lorde’s notion of self-care encompasses collective care. Through her own personal and political experiences, she shows how interconnected the self and the collective are. In fact, when Lorde says, “I am not free while any woman is unfree”, she reminds us that our freedom is always intricately intertwined.
As we argue in a previous blog on self-care, “for Lorde and many Black activists, the notion of self-care has always been much bigger than the self – it has been an intentional effort to preserve, heal, and act in the face of systems of oppression.”
In engaging with Lorde’s conceptualization of self-care as “an act of political warfare,” Ahmed reminds us that “in queer, feminist, and anti-racist work self-care is about the creation of community, fragile communities, assembled out of the experiences of being shattered.”
Where white feminism seeks to depoliticize self-care, rendering it shallow and individualistic, we turn instead to a political self-care that aims to build towards community and collective care. And in this work, there is love, lots of love.
An Ethic of Love
It was a cold and rainy January day in Glasgow. Wrapped in our warmest clothes, we were marching shoulder to shoulder, screaming at the top of our voices for Palestine’s freedom. Here’s the thing: it was love in its most revolutionary and powerful form that got us out protesting on a cold Saturday afternoon. And it is love that will get us out of this mess.
In Love as the Practice of Freedom bell hooks insists, we “desperately need an ethic of love to intervene in our self-centred longing for change.” Intentional work towards collective liberation begins with efforts to dismantle the ‘self’ and for hooks this is achieved through an “ethic of love.”
Without an ethic of love, we “move against domination solely when we feel our self-interest directly threatened.” This leaves no room for us to imagine a sense of collectivity. It means we never see the intersections of our struggles and experiences. And we never recognize that our liberation is forever interconnected.
“Moving as singular entities, not only do we deny ourselves the pleasure and joy of building together, but we also take away any chance we’ve got at fighting against our existing systems.”
This poses a real danger. Moving as singular entities, not only do we deny ourselves the pleasure and joy of building together, but we also take away any chance we’ve got at fighting against our existing systems.
As we are bombarded by horrific, violent, and heartbreaking images on our screens, we know the solution cannot be to look away. Instead, we must bear witness. We must dare to look at the activism on the ground. From student encampments, to the marches pouring out of every city across the world, to the defiance of the people on the frontlines, we see love and collective action everywhere we look.
It is only by centering love in our political practice, that we’re able to better see beyond the individual self, and draw our attention towards an activism that fights for collective transformation and community care. This work isn’t easy. It’s not endorsed by our political or social systems. But it’s our only chance. And on the other side of these systems, lies a world where we hold each other tightly. A world built on justice, equity, and liberation.
A Moment to Reflect
Collective action and community activism requires internal work. Here are some prompts and reflection questions we invite you to consider.
Audre Lorde makes a distinction between self-presevation and self-indulgence. Her conceptualization of self-care is always towards collective action and community work. How do you see the difference between the two?
For bell hooks, love is a practice. How does love govern your activism? How do you see love manifest in your work?
One of capitalism’s most potent products is individualism. How do we challenge this? What can we do to dismantle the self?
Let’s get creative. Imagine your very own manifesto that centres love at its core. What does it look like? What values guide it?
Coming up Next
While there's so much excitement and joy when we make it to the next round in a job application process, most of us would agree that the interview itself can be filled with dread. If you’re a WOC, this feeling is even more daunting, where we often must prove ourselves to all-white panels. In our next blog, we discuss interviews, and share all the tips we’ve acquired over the years. Stay tuned!