Annual Cluster Conference "Spatialities": Book Conversation
Abstract
- Abstract
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As part of the Cluster's Annual Conference on "Spatialities" Christine Vogt-Williams and Epifania Amoo-Adare talked about Amoo-Adare's book "Spatial Literacy - Contemporary Asante Women's Place-Making".
A central premise informing the concept of Critical Spatial Literacy is the decryption of specific codes found in the built environment so as to understand how these affect people’s social lives, cultural practices and sense of place. The conversation addresses how Critical Spatial Literacy might work as a conceptual frame to explore how the social and economic lives of women of (continental and diasporic) African descent have been constituted, situated and enacted in contemporary spatialities. One salient point concerns how the concept might allow for African feminist and womanist responses to uneven development.
Epifania Amoo-Adare is an independent scholar, who is interested in (un)thinking science through art and other radical approaches. She is currently based in Accra, where she is seeding Biraa Creative Initiative (BCI). Epifania has a Ph.D. in Education from UCLA and is a RIBA Part II qualified architect. Born in London, and raised in Nairobi, Cape Coast and Accra, Epifania also has over 25 years of experience working in various flelds, including education and international development, within locations like Afghanistan, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Qatar, the United Kingdom and the United States. Her post-disciplinary interests span diverse topics such as creative writing, critical pedagogy, decolonial thinking, epistemology, feminism(s), spirituality, spatial theories, and urbanization.
Origins & context
- Title
- Annual Cluster Conference "Spatialities": Book Conversation
- Language
- English
- YouTube playlist
- Conference Spatilities 2023
- Date
- January 26, 2024
Identifiers & sources
Full text
- Transcript
- okay good morning thank you so much for coming to this particular book conversation uh it concerns um a specific work by our GH G Ghan feminist scholar architect and artist Dr epia AMU adari uh the title of the book is spatial literacy which is published in 200 13 with Paul grave McMillan so we are in 2023 this is the 10th anniversary of this particular book and I'm extremely pleased to be able to welcome Dr epifania AMU adari the author of this work Dr Amo Adar is an independent scholar who is interested in unthinking science through ART and other radical approaches she's currently based in Acra where she's seeding bir creative initiative known as BCI epifania has a PhD in education from UCLA and is an R part two qualified architect I do not know what that means but I'm sure it concerns her professional qualifications born in London and raised in Nairobi Cape coast and Acra epifania also has over 25 years of experience working in various Fields including education and International Development M within locations like Afghanistan Georgia Germany Ghana Qatar the United Kingdom and the United States a post-disciplinary interest in Span diverse topics such as creative writing critical pedagogy decolonial thinking epistemology feminisms spirituality spatial Theory and urbanization so without any further Ado I would like to start with our conversation we are in a time when there is a grave and growing need for critical spatial literacy although we as inhabitants of physical space and its Associated ideological constructs for example Global Community Nation neighborhood home Etc are most probably overwhelmed by the constant production and consumption of the built environment we are not necessarily literate in the political language of space and how it affects power struggles and daily social practice and identity construction I begin with this py quote from epiphania introduction to her book and I ask epifania why is critical spatial literacy important in your view especially as it relates to women of African descent on the well on the continent as well as in diasporic spaces okay um um and and maybe I want to preempt that um first I'll I'll start actually with an introduction that gives a little bit of positionality and then I'll answer the question but I'll do it from the book because in some ways you mentioned 10 years is been probably more than that in terms of thinking about it and so interesting enough I am even distant from my own work at at this moment right cuz as we we shift and change but just to give you a frame of where I was coming from at that time um and it starts by saying Renegade architecture I am an Ashanti woman who was born in London raised in Nairobi and Acra studied in Cape Coast London and Los Angeles and now works in Doha after employment STS in cabal harat and the South caucuses based out of tii for these and many other reasons I suffer contradictory crisis of being placeless and yet simultaneously filled with knowledge and ownership of different languages of urban space this may well account for my obsession with deciphering the politics of urban space and what my role as an African woman is in that place of quintessential social struggle simply because I also believe that it is especially in in in these Urban geogra geohistorical Landscapes that women like myself experience the tension between the global pull away from the push of traditional cultural practices which are fast becoming nostalgic memories nowadays we live in diasporic conditions even when in sconed in our homelands in other words my interest in Ashanti women spatial experiences is rooted in the understanding that feminist researchers begin their investigation of the social World from a grounded position in their own subjective oppression quoting wher here in that the personal provides an experiential ground from which a theoretical understanding can be made of material structural circumstances so so as an Ashanti woman who has lived in several cities including Acra my personal migratory experience provides a ground from which theoretical understandings have been made of of Ashanti woman's conceptions of contemporary Urban space including their structural circumstances in gh's capital and I say this because aan ashantis origin not from the capital I mean the capital is GH um the indigenous population um admittedly because a are about 52% and asantis actually are not even 16% but if you're talking um histories of colonialism asan in some ways colonized parts of Ghana parts of Ivory Coast and and so on previously so so there's some um remnants of us in different places including interesting the the funerals um that you were talking about um I also make this assertion from a womanist positionality which recognizes that critical Consciousness must incorporate racial cultural National Economic political and sexual issues into a philosophy that is committed with love to the survival and homel of an entire people and here I'm I'm looking at um womanism from Ai and also um Walker position I've always lived in urban centers and found that my understanding negotiation manipulation and ownership of space real and imagined is often predetermined and confined by the prescribed colonized gendered racialized heterosexualized and or or class-based social relations of global capitalism as a woman and as a minority I'm particularly disadvantaged within the politics of space I've been privy to a minority and female experience of discrimination by design of a predominantly Western man-made built environment uh here Leslie Kane wisman is who I'm I'm thinking about when she talks about the man-made environment um and ironically I experienced this disadvantage despite my access to a privileged professional and academic architectural discourse through six years of architectural training albe it restrictive each discriminatory circumstance has often been mediated by my very specific combination of gender ethnicity class position able-bodied heterosexuality and Architectural privilege thus consequently it varies in nuance and degree from situation to situation from location to location it is from these relational Lial spaces that I began developing my own critical spatial literacy in particular an understanding of the dominant ideologies that inform West Western Urban architecture which then enables my imagining of alternative social physical spaces so to so to rip for a bit um I went into architecture school um and where we were learning a lot of theories and and Leslie K wisman is one of the people I'm thinking of and really looking at this question of space and how it was described as you know public spaces for men and and private spaces for women and and so on and so forth and the notion of the household and who's supposed to be in the household and for me there were a lot of tensions because I was often thinking of my grandmother's house because ashantis are also matrilineal so there's a different household configuration traditionally and there are also different conceptions of let's say uh women's place of gender and for me uh it might also be why Professor auran ki's work resonated in some ways because gender was not always necessarily the marker of power uh in many ways in in many instances it may be age um or affiliation or your your connection to um well I wouldn't call it the matriarch cuz it's not really a matri but but this idea of you know men and women in a family and their relationships and in many instances those relationships being reciprocal and and the value of these relationships um uh being important and so when I came to architecture school I was in many ways kind of baffled because some of it didn't Vibe with some of what I knew but it also totally vibed with the way my my parents had maintained their household so in this case my mother being a very strong like strong Catholic um and this notion of the household and the the the father as the head of the family and and living in this um in in many ways a nuclear configuration but often it being disrupted by by um abusa so ABIA being the extended family so the matrinal family interjecting or in being engaged in either helping with um with child care um but also us getting to know them and then being in a household that seemed to be um I don't want to say dominated but no I'll rephrase that being in a household that seemed to be absent of paternity because maternity or the mothers your aunties because in amongst ashantis your mother sisters are your mothers there's no real distinction I mean um anyway that's another Point Al together and then also in terms of gender as well right we we don't necessarily have gender pronouns and and things like that um so so so this jarring is what began my critical spatial literacy but also being a migrant in London trying to sort out this issue of housing so being sometimes potentially homeless trying to navigate the the housing space in in in um in London which in in some ways interestingly enough landed me in a Housing Association that dealt with single homeless ex offenders but opened its doors to single populations because in the UK then often if you had children or if you were married you had a greater chance of accessing affordable social housing than if you didn't and for me that was a very interesting experience because there I was studying architecture um learning how to create space and imagine myself as this person who could design space and and and uh for other people when I myself couldn't even determine my own spatial Destiny and my own housing Destiny so so these were actually the beginnings of of where I was coming from and then maybe to continue you're answering this question because what what I want you all to do is do that I'm talking maybe a little too long now but that's another conversation well yeah I mean um you you you basically provided us with the Bedrock of how you're going to carry on with how this spe uh specific theory that you've you've set up this theoretical complex how you set it up and I uh I'm particularly interested in how it it sort of of can connect or or separate distance uh you know women from Continental spaces and diasporic spaces and how that works for you as somebody who's conscious of space as an architect because you just addressed an an interesting um sort of of of uh binary here home in the domicile of the actual built home yeah but also home at the nation state level we we we've got these two understandings of Home especially working if if you're going to be using the the question of diasporic conditions right diaspora as a type not just as a state but more of a process right so how does that how does that tie in with how you U sort of un understand critical spatial literacy being literate in critical language about how in the spaces that we move in live in that sort of of of complexity yeah well I mean when I'm listening a question and thinking about it I'm realizing that at least for is a is a is a shifting terrain and it's hard to pin down um and especially when you talked about this question of home and especially now in in our um a current environment with issues in relation to Mobility but also technology and digital because I think that home in many ways um moves and shifts and and for me home was this critical question also because ironically you know you're talking about me as a as a ghanian scholar and so on but Ghana for me was the moment where I um understood alienation okay and that mainly was because um uh I I had been born abroad I went to Primary School in Kenya and then came to Ghana and I had and in Kenya I'd always touted myself as being ghanian so any of the positive attributes was because I was Ghan and then when I came to Ghana I went to boarding school um it was very made really clear that I was not Ghan and this this was a curious space to be in um and but it also made sense in the context of you know everyday habits how we operate and how we function right um but it was very strange to then feel alien in a location where you you you're technically supposed to feel at home and this raised a lot of questions for me and for me it speaks to I think even as I was coming today and and I was I think over rehearsing all the things I'll talk about but anyway um I was thinking of this question about Africa multiple and and what it what is it what does it mean to be African right um and so for me this was very much what does it mean to be ghanian and I thought to myself at first that perhaps I'm I'm not ghanian but then at at the later stage I thought to myself no I would insist on being ghanian because I do think that we have been moving and traveling for many years we have been um investigating the world and understanding ourselves differently in relationship to the world uh um uh as a consequence of those in interactions and then if we are also to go to the gentleman I guess when we had the presentation about ifan the idea of cyclical life and the fact that perhaps I am one of my ancestors then I am then um Ghan in many ways but I also think that being that is also about being different and and about being in in different flows MH but let me go back again to this critical specialis because I want to illustrate a little Point here and and maybe do it in in three little um movements as well um okay so first I'll start um reading this is from the prologue and I start with a quote that's translated from chi ah this mother of yours I've said everything that I can say and it's not everything that I can tell you so now you you have to sit down and do it dig deeper in order to get a kernel of knowledge out of it so that in the future you can use it to live your life in July 2003 when Nana Sapa and Nana is a term that's also used for like for elders to show the resp uttered these crucial words little did we know then that it would result in the writing and publication of this book on contempor Ashanti woman's critical literacy of urban space and how to make one's place within everchanging postmodern Landscapes Nana Sapa the eldest among 37 akan women interviewed between 2001 and 2003 in a few simple words has captured the essence of what I describe as feminist and Renegade architectural prodject fundamentally this project is my effort to comprehend Ashanti woman's negotiation and reclaiming of sense of place within uneven spatial development while simultaneously coming to terms with my own often beleaguered Ashanti female and architectural identity and and and as I'm talking about this I want you to also think of think tonight sure yeah [Music] yeah we're using space here people using space yeah okay and creating space in this book I specifically make an argument for an un urgent practice of critical spatial literacy at a basic level critical spatial literacy can be enacted simply by recognition of how one's Nuance placement in specific geographical landscape and time has historical significance in Social cultural practices due to spatial configurations and concomittant ideologies about the built form therefore I provide a series of discussions in order to illustrate how critical spatial literacy is manifested within through and by the specific example of this feminist architectural project in producing this book from the P panoptic distance of Doha a big part of my challenge has been how to speak of critical spatial literacy in its many manifestations related to this project without making it seem at all convoluted I just ah okay this being due to the fact that I present critical spatial literacy as serving these many functions and purposes primarily I write this book to encourage a critical spatial literacy in readers about Ashanti woman's own reading and negotiation of the post modern world and its transformatory transnational cultural and economic flows two it is also through the development of my own critical literacy of space that I came to do the research work upon which the discussions in this book are based three in doing the research work itself critical spatial literacy was used as a theoretical framework that guided initial analysis and thinking about the data collected in add in for in addition I deem the perceptive negotiation and reading of specialty by the Ashanti woman in order to make their own places within it as Prime acts of critical spatial literacy ultimately I am also advocating for others to consider utilizing critical spatial literacy as a bold feminist theorizing practice for Renegade architectural understandings of the effects of the built environment on our spatial configurations social practice practices and sense of place as well as of our own returning influences on spatiality for me these versatile ways of doing developing and utilizing critical spatial literacy signify its potential for assisting Us in digging deeper into our many lives in order to get kernels of knowledge on spatiality which we can then use to better live those very Dynamic fluid and challenged existences and I don't know if anybody has any comments or thoughts about what just took place yeah audience participation is also required in generating space please press the yeah okay yeah so uh this is a very interesting book and uh I I think I would like to introduce it to my students uh uh particularly uh their engineers and so they work with design and uh the actual fact what I tell them most of the time is that they they're not actually designing material structures they're designing community so um hopefully and uh I think they'll be very interested because they will be going in Ghana in January I'm preparing them now to go to Ghana to work in projects and what they'll be interested in is how do we translate these ideas into practice they're Engineers they don't have patience with abstraction they think mostly in terms of uh translating abstract ideas into concrete ideas into projects of empowerment emancipation on the ground and so I think when they read this book that's what will be going on in their mind how do I use this in aam D in Ghana when I'm working on this Coco farming project when I'm working on on this marketing project when I'm working on this Clinic how do I Empower so it would be very very interesting to see and I don't know if you could add something to that on how to facilitate the pro maybe now or maybe later that would be great yeah and maybe to speak to that um because one of the things I wanted to emphasize because some of the base of I think around speciality was really in relation to HBS notion about the construction of space yeah and that space was very much about really three things the physical so the chairs in this room the technology and so on and so forth but it was also very much about the abstract and and this for me is the critical bit and what really matters and which is the ideas and the ideologies behind those physical things so the idea behind this microphone the fact that you have to wait and be allowed to actually um ask your question right bus a a certain kind of social practice and I don't say this as a as a critique it's just a recognition of the reality right and then also what that reality may or may not do to you in terms of how you feel about asking your question and and then I can imagine also in a context where perhaps you do not feel that um uh well because we also U even though I think knowledge is fluid and we all should have equal equal access to that knowledge or equal right to question or or um or even denounce or what have you that that knowledge even if based on nothing um we have hierarchies so so for a certain person who might feel well maybe it's a silly question this alone might even create a barrier to to doing it but the third thing that LE talk was important so there's as I mentioned the physical abstract was this notion of live space and this was a space of possibility this is where I could perhaps decide to now start dancing or walking over the chairs I mean I might be considered crazy but but it allows for something different to occur um so when I moved around it may or may not have mattered but I would assume the perceptions of who I was and where I was speaking from and my ability to command MH I'm presuming I don't know if it did for others probably shifted I know it shifted for me from I mean sitting here and watching you move around the room but um I I'm here in at at at the front of the space I have a kind of a panoptic view as it were but what was interesting for me is to think that while you were doing this while you were sitting there people sitting in the in the rest of the room could only hear your voice your disembodied voice but you were still in the room MH and and here also I I I I kind of saw draw a connection to tendai sat's idea of somatic thought where we do not see you but we are hearing your voice articulating your thoughts from then and now and how this more or less fills this space it was a site of knowledge production but how do we then perceive that knowledge production and I think this and I think that's what for me matters most because it also comes down to and I think you had a question about it comes down to the question of power because I because even uh well the one thing I think is great coming out of feminist politics is the notion that the personal is political so at any given moment as I'm conversing with you more often than not I am trying to convince you of my position I might be trying to CAU you into my position and depending on how high the stakes are I might be coercing you into my my my condition but but what became important for me was um how um space plays a role in that and how it predisposes us to particular kinds of behaviors so I thought it was interesting you're saying when I was sitting there nobody could see me and and for me it starts begging questions like how do we listen or hear each other when I do not see you when I cannot perceive you potentially as being Authority but but recognizing that there other there other inflections upon that right so other inflections in relationship to Notions around gender age race uh class etc etc that layer our readings of of of things I'm I'm I'm so glad you brought that up because I I I have to say one more time my dear people we are very very privileged to have the author of this book sitting here with us 10 years after the book was published what is interesting here is we are having a conversation with the author who also has distanced herself from the book but still is revisiting it pretty much I mean probably even reading it with fresh eyes now I like the idea of of book conversations because sometimes authors are not there we can't see them all right but we're still having a conversation with the book I'm really glad I've got the book and the author here I'm just saying okay and this is where I love these sort of interactions between that textual space and the bodied space I'm seeing somatic thought come alive and for me this is exciting I have I have imaginary conversations with Audrey Lord I I'm I'm I'm admitting to that please don't think I'm crazy this is part of your intellectual exercise there's nothing wrong with being crazy but anyway that's yeah so so um which is why I'm extremely happy that that we have this opportunity here to actually uh reflect on how we look at space critically I see there's a question please do please do ah okay um thank you so much Christine just mentioned how exciting it was that you're here and um thank you uh for for for sharing this this memory uh of of your project with us um and I have a bit of a maybe um difficult question I don't know but also drawing back to your example when you Chang places you know because um for me I also became aware of the space you know uh how we're sitting in One Direction very confronted here you know very much um ordered in a way that you know the great man standing in front of us uh can lecture us you know that sort of thing so I was wondering how um uh a change in usage of space or uh as you might call it Place making also draws awareness of power relations you know and specific power relations you know so um maybe maybe are there any examples that you could give to to how that is happening you know that uh Renegade architecture or or the women's placemaking uh actually Drew attention to um naturalized socialized power relations um yeah that's an interesting question I mean I well one I wouldn't be so vain to think that writing this book has done it right but I do know that in many other contexts because actually I wanted to Riff on something try and connect the two because as we were talking one of the things that came to me and and it's also some of the the learning that I had because I I mentioned critical spatial um spatial literacy in his base form when I was talking about lefur but of course there all these other layers and for me it was through certain kinds of theories or certain activism that I was trying to understand um how those theories also informed what I was looking at so whether it was womanism postmodern geography uh critical pedagogy within education so I would say maybe within critical pedagogy and education like because we're in this space there's been a lot of work looking looking at this question because one of the things I found interesting was I think it's even in fuku discipline and punish um is the notion even that school architecture is based on Prison architecture and the idea of surveillance and and control and so I guess the question for me always became if we knew that would we behave differently in classrooms would we protest against particular configurations and say no I don't want to do it in this room can we do something else um would we even design the spaces in those ways um and and for me the the it's not so much about not having this or not having that but it's about being always aware and conscious of the silences you're creating as a consequence of what you have chosen to do because at the end of the day ultimately is a choice I mean I think for me that's why I like what Donna har has to say about in relation situation knowledge is that you know there isn't really this idea of objective TR truth it's about power moves and we're always instituting some level of power mve no matter how small it is um in order to get what we need or or be heard and and so on and so forth um but again going to this question of um because you meant I think well supp be a littleit but anyway in relation to Stan I I think of Paulo frer in relation to literacy so he was looking for specifically education and education being a practice of freedom and how can we make education a practice of freedom and for him one of the the Notions he was interested is this idea of con and I'm probably mispronouncing it in Portuguese but this idea of critical Consciousness which also for me spoke to critical feminist Consciousness raising um spoke to me in terms of Fon and and you um and um uh even about decolonizing the mind so so is this same theme that that is coming up this layering of themes but from different perspectives um and what is important for me in frir is f talked about because he was looking at literacy and literacy of farmers and how to provide a literacy in terms of being able to read text but that allows the farmers to also step back from their reality and be able to understand the power differentials and how their lives are being impacted in um in relationship to the everyday livelihoods um in relationship with the context they were in but but what F went on to say which I think was very significant for me was he said before we read the text we we read the context and it is through the reading of the context through what our elders say through how they behave through the myths um and superstitions um and a whole range of other um learning you know socializations and so on that we learn to read the world and either um embrace it or fear it and that always in reading the text you are reading the context and back and forth and I think for us as researchers this is even more significant because at the at the bottom line we're storytellers even even though we talk about evidence and and so but we we are storytellers who who are actually uh rewriting the world that we live in and having huge impact sometimes be beyond our own uh recognition um and and I and when I say that I'm thinking of a conversation a a ghanian student said to me where she went to community and a person said to her that I didn't know I was poor until you told me I was poor so this is what I mean about we are storytellers and and need to be um careful about this um one how we reading the world then how we then are rewriting it and and the silences that are involved in that and I think now I'm talking too much about no no I we here to to hear you talk I'm so please uh in indeed I mean there's so many things I'd love to riff off this is like a jazz jam session oh yeah I like that I like that um I'm I'm I'm just would like to pick up on the business of silences because that also sort of got me thinking about how you positioned yourself in the room how you use the space to illustrate uh how critical spatial literacy can work um what was interesting for me is that like for example from different spaces back there uh the the fact that for a time your body was invisible but your thoughts and your voice were there and when you talk about silences I I I was just also thinking about the ways in which black women Scholars have been invisibilized for example in this particular transdisciplinary field of African studies I mean if you think about our citational politics right okay and and I found it highly highly uh thought-provoking here uh while um these knowledges can be rendered invisible uh these voices can be rendered silenced I'm I'm I'm then thinking how critical spatial literacy can also help sort of of of undo this invisibilization and and undo this sort of silencing right so I'm I'm hoping that this conversation is contributing to that people so that we're actually practicing what these principles of U sort of set out in this book can actually help us uh do this as researchers so so this is a thought that just occurred to me while you were speaking about this idea of silencing so so that that was important you see here how different questions are sort of connecting and riffing off of each other I'm enjoying this I don't know about you sorry but I was just thinking like earlier with the when you talked about IFA is in everyone right and and and I think in some ways this this is a um touching touching on this idea a little bit for me um um and now I've lost I've lost what I was thinking because you were saying some stuff that was really interesting um yeah this question of invisibilization ah because I was thinking of of of okay this is what I was thinking I was thinking that um for me I guess now in sort of hindsight or or or seeing other things critical spatial literacy in many ways was really me saying that there's a need to be um Vigilant and constantly aware and aware of what you're reading who you're reading potentially where they're coming from why they're positioning themselves as they are and even if that's at a very pragmatic level I have to read it because if I don't read it my committee will say that I I I haven't a clue you know and I shouldn't be in this department right but being aware that when that's happening what are you leaving behind CU because one of the things that were very strong for me was how my reading changed from reading what moved me uh in some ways emotionally and bodily because I was having an issue and somebody says or issue with let's say racism in the UK somebody says have you read Jun Jordan's poem of my rights um and and then you pick it up and you read it and and your life gets inflected by it and you shift how you behave and what you do to now reading have you read this Theory because it it it's you know in the the body of work is a cannon and if you haven't read and and so on and so forth um but yes so so this idea of awareness and what your uh um reading and not reading becomes important but beyond that also I think for me this idea within womanism is that is about a love of an entire community and by entire Community I don't only mean that the communities that we potentially might come from a marginalized Community but I think almost in some ways a global Community because I also think that when one approaches with a certain kind of love you you also become aware of who's being silent and who's not being silence and you and you then as F talks about um have um people or students who who are are ready to also be angry because of their love of everybody and those who are not getting um uh who are not being valued in many ways right um so so so for me as you were talking you know you were talking about because I think one of the questions the first question you asked is um is it a perspective of theory or practice and I thought no I think for me it's a is a is a way of thinking is a mode of being um and so as a consequence yes in many ways is a practice and it can be whatever you need it to be because I don't think it should also be prescriptive um earlier we were talking about this notion of how we police each other in terms of what you've read and haven't read in the cannon and so on but I also think that our our intellectual Journeys are actually in many ways I would argue like our spiritual Journeys they're deeply personal and there's certain texts that you'll be called to and that are calling you um but you just need to recognize where you've been called and be able to say no this is this is where I'm being called and this is what it means and it may have no relevance in today's world but it might have relevance to somebody 50 well if we're not at the end of the planetary boundaries 50 or 60 years from now it may have resonance in somebody's life and and you don't know that so yeah yeah exactly I mean this um also then calls to mind the idea of of um how critical spatial literacy might also um help generate in advance decolonial feminist Visions right the idea of of intellectual Journeys the idea of being conscious of being uh part of a specific political moment and what uh needs to be done what needs to be read what is it that we're reading why are we reading it what are we meant to do with this reading so so that level of of responsibility and accountability for what is happening right now in order to generate a future a future uh as it were so so how how how would you see this sort of of being generative in a decolonial feminist sort of of framework because the the I see decoloniality sorry also as being part of of of envisioning Futures Futures yeah um yeah that's an interesting question that takes me in all places um to be honest with you when I did this and as a student I think I was a lot less humbl than I would potentially be now cuz you know in the interest of time like now understanding that you know there's some thinking that we picking up now that was being looked at 20 30 plus years ago right and I remember watching a video a long time ago that was about um what do they call it like the third University or something is that what it was but it was talking about how social movement how it's it's 20 plus years and Beyond um in all honesty I would argue that I don't know and it and it would be perhaps for somebody else to say whether or not it it does any of that right but all I know is that I was just trying to understand who I was and and what what was my my use on well okay not utilitarian capitalist language but anyway what yes at that time actually no what was my use you know what was my use on on this planet why did I why did I matter and why did what I was thinking matter right and that's what I was trying to understand but also at the same time to understand why why I was in a world where it was difficult for for um and and in fact if I say this I'm being maybe even too generous to myself because I'm saying people like myself because it wasn't people like myself I was still highly advantaged in comparison to what was happening to so many different people oh and now I feel like yes um in the world yeah but yeah so we was just trying to um understand that um anyway that Dynamic but but I say all this to also say that one of the things I'm well now I've been thinking a lot about unthinking and the role of emotion and and intuition and all these other aspects of in in our lives as um uh academics whatever that means um and this idea of of the wholeness of being and not teased out bits to being performed in particular spaces because it's advantageous or is is is is relevant for that moment um yeah what does it mean to to do that and and this book for me was maybe the beginning of that yeah um yeah but anyway that's another conversation yeah I'm I'm the the question of emotions and emotionality I I'd just like to also say that it Bears thinking that this is part of our our uh uh understanding of critical space uh and I'm here I'm talking about the critical space of the body as well I like to I like to think of emotions uh uh tears affective responses uh uh also as a mode of somatic thought yeah and and I think that these modes of somatic thought uh particularly coming from Black gendered class bodies complex bodies complex uh situated knowledges this is something that needs to be reiterated and and consistently reexplored because of the richness of what we can learn right so I'm I'm not going to Discount discomfort I'm not going to Discount tears I'm not going to Discount your being choked up if you are moved when you see how space works on us and how we work on space so I'm working very time consciously we've got another two minutes we've got another two minutes are there any more uh uh uh questions yes we could you please press on the on on the gr button please that's what happens to us yeah yeah okay thank you is it okay yeah yeah I was also fascinated and certainly read your book and in uh you're trained as an architect as I understand uh and when you speak about women uh Shanti women plac making uh mostly architectural training is not a gendered um that's I don't know your but gender is not an overwhelming uh uh um thing in it but with your training when you look at the Shanti women Place making a concrete Place making do you see their differences from what you learned what has to be done that would interest me very much I'm thinking about a sort of example but that would be too long yeah yeah no what you're saying yeah is interesting in in that sense um and I think I know what you mean about it not being gendered because what it is is the the the the dominant gender is invisible m so so yeah so so it's it's taken for granted um how you operate as a let's say as an architect and how you design and that you you're and that you're designing for others right because you have the expertise and and this was a question that I think um then deeply concerned me because I used to think that if we all felt we owned and could use a language of space would there be the need for Architects because many people before used to build their own homes right or at least would we interject more in how spaces are are built and designed um but for me if you're talking about this concrete example of differences um my my like my the traditional house that my grandmother in was more of a mat lineal compound so so traditionally um there would be I suppose mineal the the the the main mother or grandmother whatever you and then it would be h h children so her sons and daughters her daughter's children because the son's children belong to their mother's household um and so in in that tradition um you your nephew inherits from you not not your son if you're if you're a man um and so in many ways I think this configuration also aided things like um mobility in relation to work because one of the things I found interesting um which actually somebody mentioned memory or something but um did you mention memory I think you mentioned memory yeah yeah because it made me think of I read a text I think by hon where he talked about memory rear because because in many ways for me even as an Ashanti a lot some of this I am deciphering from British anthropological texts and so on so I'm I'm experiencing my own lived history textually not through um an actual um embodied understanding of it um but but yes so so but if I look at just my grandmother is comp compares to my mother my my mother moved into more nuclear household moving with her husband maybe joint income and so on and so forth but it had a lot of um challenging implications so for example around things like even inheritance when people died like now is a lot better partly to do with some of the rules that are brought in legislatively so this sort of British law but customary law as well well but there were big contestations about who the wealth belonged to because families would say we contributed to educating our son and so now his wealth also belongs to us it doesn't belong to you as a nuclear family and stuff so so there are certain kinds of um moments of tension um and then there's also when I was doing my research um a dismantling some ways of these extended family uh connections because I'm as as I said my aunts are actually my mother's they're not my aunts but now the notion is my aunts are my aunts and and this has implications for support systems and structures how people relate without the benefit of social we welfare systems that you find in the west because I think social welfare systems in the west are doing the work of what in many ways extended families do elsewhere I'm thinking my uncle now who's seriously ill and the Health Care system and they have two or three carers and so coming through the who who interestingly enough are all immigrants but that that's another conversation but um yeah uh I don't know if that answers somehow yeah um we we we have to actually slowly wrap up it's already quarter past and I was told we have to be strict about this but I hope that the conversation has offered some thought impulses um and and and just for the sake of further provocative thought um I would say architecture is actually a Ed discipline as um epifania has said it it is marked by the unmarked of heteropatriarchal privilege and uh there's a specific coloniality about it as well uh coloniality that extends to gender and race but yeah um those are more uh complex conversations that we can have later I hope um you enjoyed this book conversation being a literary studies scholar I like having conversation with books and I hope hope I've infected you with a little bit of that enthusiasm thank you so much Dr epifania amadar can I have some love for her please and we ask one question she's got a question no I said and we only managed to ask one question who who who managed to ask no no no oh oh that's all right don't worry I I I have a whole slew of of of questions but they they were all answered in in different ways from different trajectories thank you so much please enjoy the rest of the afternoon please enjoy your lunch thank you