How to Cite
Abstract
This analysis addresses the need to develop an ethos of decolonial refusal in Composition Studies and the academy in general, arguing that refusal is a livening rhetorical strategy of survival that challenges colonial futurity (Tuck and Yang), is generative and generous (McGranahan), and opens liminal space (Anzaldua, García-Peña, Lugones) for existing in predominantly white institutions — not at the margins nor centers but at the places of transformative possibility and deep relationality (Ahmed, Bilge and Collins). Focusing on refusal as performative, rhetorical, and undisciplined(Pough, Durham), and following in the lineage of Black and Third World feminist and Critical Race theories on narratives as political tools, I share a constellation of experiences from organizing spaces to graduate education to forward a multi-modal pedagogy of refusal in composition. More specifically, I share this piece, which bridges academic critique, with counternarratives, mini-diálogos, and art prints to signal to the composing practices that are possible and necessary in our shared classroom.References
Ahmed, Sara. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham: Duke UP,
Print.
---------.“It Can Be Tiring, All That Whiteness.” FeministKillJoys. 30 Aug. 2013. Web 5 May
Alexander, M. Jacqui. Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics,
Memory, and the Sacred. Duke UP, 2005. Print.
Anzaldúa Gloria.Borderlands/La Frontera: the New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books, 1987
Bambara, Toni Cade, and Thabiti Lewis. “An Interview with Toni Cade Bambara: Kay Bonetti.”
In Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012, 35.
Coalition for Community Writing. “Vision Statement.” https://communitywriting.org/mission-goals/
Collins, Patricia Hill, and Sirma Bilge. Intersectionality. Polity Press, 2016.
Durham Aisha. Home with Hip Hop Feminism: Performances in Communication and Culture.
Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers, 2014.
Essed, Philomena. “Gendered Preferences in Racialized Spaces: Cloning the Physician.”
Racialization: Studies in Theory and Practice. Oxford University Press, 2005.
García-Peña Lorgia. The Borders of Dominicanidad: Race, Nation, and Archives of Contradiction.
Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
Grande, Sandy. “Refusing the University.” Toward What Justice? Ed. Eve Tuck and K. Wayne
Yang. New York: Routledge, 2018. Pp 47-65
Gumbs, Alexis Pauline. “The Shape of My Impact.” Feminist Wire. 29 Oct. 2012. Web. 8 Apr.
--------- “We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves: The Queer Survival of Black
Feminism 1968-1996.” Dissertation, Duke University, 2010. Web. Accessed 26 August, 2018.
Harney, Stefano and Fred Moten. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study.
Autonomedia, 2013.
hooks, bell. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Kaba, Mariame. “Towards the Horizon of Abolition: A conversation with Mariame
Kaba.” Interview by John Duda. The Next System Project, Nov. 2017.
Kynard, Carmen. Vernacular Insurrections: Race, Black Protest, and the New Century in
Composition-Literacies Studies. New York: SUNY Press, 2013. Print.
---------. “Academy & Mass Consumer Culture: Hip hop.” Education, Liberation and Black Radical
Traditions for the 21st Century. Nov. 2012. Retrieved from http://carmenkynard.org/hip-hop-and-the-academy/
---------.“Teaching While Black: Witnessing Disciplinary Whiteness, Racial Violence, and
Race-Management.” Literacy in Composition Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2015, pp. 1–20.
---------. “Notes on Racial Realism by One of the ‘Problem People.’” Education, Liberation & Black
Radical Traditions for the 21st Century, 19 Oct. 2017. Retrieved from http://carmenkynard.org/notes-racial-realism-one-problem-people/.
Lorde, Audre. “Learning from the 60’s.” Sister Outsider. Trumansburg, New York: Crossing,
pp. 134-44.
Lugones, Maria. Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition Against Multiple Oppressions.
New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
Martinez, Aja Y. "A Plea for Critical Race Theory Counterstory: Stock Story Versus
Counterstory Dialogues Concerning Alejandra's “‘Fit’ in the Academy.” Composition
Studies, vol. 42, no. 2, 2014, pp. 33.
McGranahan, Carole. "Theorizing Refusal: An Introduction." Cultural Anthropology 31, no. 3
: 319–325. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca31.3.01
Mignolo, Walter D. “Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the
Grammar of De-Coloniality.” Globalization and the Decolonial Option. Eds Walter D.
Mignolo and Arturo Escobar. New York: Routledge, 2010.
---------.“Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom.” Theory,
Culture & Society, vol. 26, no. 7-8, 2009, pp. 159–181.
Moten, Fred. Black and Blur. Duke University Press, 2017.
Olwan, Dana. “On Assumptive Solidarities in Comparative Settler Colonialisms.” Feral Feminisms. 4
(2015): 89-102.
Pough, Gwendolyn. Rhetorical Disruptions: Black Public Cultures and the Public Sphere. 2000.
Miami University, PhD dissertation.
Pritchard, Eric D. “Anti-Racist Think Tank”. Conference on Community Writing, 18 Oct. 2017.
Ramírez Dixa. Colonial Phantoms: Belonging and Refusal in the Dominican Americas, from the
th Century to the Present. New York University Press, 2018.
Smith, Andrea. “Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy.” R acial Formation in the
Twenty-First Century , ed. HoSang, Daniel Martinez, et al. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2012. 67-68
Tuck, Eve & K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity,
Education & Society 1.1 2012, pp. 1-40.
---------. Toward What Justice? Describing Diverse Dreams of Justice in Education. New York: Routledge,
West, Cornel. “A Genealogy of Modern Racism.” R ace Critical Theories . Eds. Philomena Essed
and David Theo Goldberg. Malden: MA, 2002.
Zuberi, Tukufu and and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, eds. W hite Logic, White Methods. New York:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2008.