The fourth panel I attended at #Readercon was "Recent Nonfiction Essay Club: 'Decolonizing the Imagination' by Zetta Elliott" with Vandana Singh, @john_chu, @CadwellTurnbull, @ShiningComic, and moderated by @katenepveu. (Note: I haven't read the essay)
As with my previous recaps, I'm not sure which things in my notes are quotes, and which are paraphrases. I have fewer notes for this thread than the last one, probably because the panelists were speaking about things that felt more personal.
Panelists began by speaking about some of their own decolonization experiences.
From Vandana Singh: Feminism is not an exclusively Western phenomenon.
Also from Vandana Singh: Rural, uneducated people have something to contribute.
And @john_chu talked about how someone had to tell him he needed to not write like a white European man.
From @ShiningComic: I needed to decolonize the idea of Western Scientific Method as the best/only method. Indigenous people often point out things they know to be true and are overlooked.
From @CadwellTurnbull: I want to see vernacular used in third person omniscient.
Also from @CadwellTurnbull: Language has authority. It affects who gets access, who's centered, and where we think the information comes from.
More from @CadwellTurnbull: Linguists study people, then write about those people in a way that's inaccessible to the people they're writing about. (So the people being studied can't, for example, correct misrepresentation.)
From @john_chu: Science fiction tends to view things through a lens of conquest and colonization rather than immigration: we go to a place, and it's ours vs. we go to a place and become part of it.
From @john_chu: I have to do an amount of translation that I shouldn't have to do.
From Vandana Singh, on growing up reading British fiction: "I thought exciting things only happen to white people."
From Vandana Singh: We have so many identities in different contexts.
Also from Vandana Singh: Colonization makes you ashamed of what you love and tears you inside.
More from Vandana Singh: Decolonization is not only for the less privileged.
From Vandana Singh: There's a notion you separate yourself from what you're studying in order to be objective. This bothers me, so I have scientists try to understand a thing by being inside it.
From @CadwellTurnbull: Complete decolonization is impossible.
From @CadwellTurnbull: "Standard" has markers - they're just the dominant ones.
From @CadwellTurnbull: Over time, we've separated the narrator from the author. Do you have to combine them to use vernacular?
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