00:00:00.000For the Wild podcast is brought to you in part by the Calliopeia Foundation and listeners like you.
00:00:05.720Calliopeia supports projects interweaving spirituality, culture, and ecology.
00:00:11.160We are grateful for their support and the support of grassroots contributions from listeners.
00:00:16.020To learn more about the Calliopeia Foundation, visit calliopeia.org.
00:00:20.860To make a donation to For the Wild, visit forthewild.world slash donate or support us through Patreon.
00:00:30.000Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today I will be speaking to Anjali
00:00:37.940Nath Upadhyay. Anjali is academically trained as a political scientist, philosopher, and educator.
00:00:45.520She is the founder of the grassroots adult education program, Liberation Spring, and host
00:00:51.500of the decolonial feminist podcast, Feral Visions. A recovered academic, her long-standing
00:00:58.080Curiosities focus on learning and teaching as practices of liberation. Maybe if I'm feeling
00:01:03.680rage, that merits attention. That means that I know that I'm worthy of dignity and I'm allowed
00:01:10.660to have boundaries. Anjali holds an MA degree in political science from the University of Hawaii
00:01:21.620at Manoa with specializations in political theory and indigenous politics, the only program of a
00:01:28.080kind in the U.S. Additionally, she earned a graduate certificate in international cultural
00:01:33.540studies from the only cultural studies program in the U.S. that explicitly centers scholarship
00:01:39.020from the global south. Furthermore, she holds an M.A. degree from the oldest women's studies
00:01:45.080department in the U.S. From 2010 to 2014, she was a fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.
00:01:52.140This training combined with a lifetime of organizing, healing, and loving dignity animates Anjali's purpose.
00:02:00.460It's her honor to support folks in making their impact as good as their intentions.
00:02:05.840Well, Anjali, thank you so much for joining me today to discuss your incredibly restorative and fruitful life's work.
00:02:14.420It's an honor. Thank you so much for having me.
00:02:16.820So I'd like to begin in recognition of this precarious moment we are experiencing, a moment which is both emblematic of late stage capitalism, as well as piercing instance of clarity in which many are coming to consciousness.
00:02:34.680So to begin, I'm hoping you can speak to how, while many of us are especially ripe to join
00:02:40.000in congregation with communities committed to collective liberation, that we must first
00:02:44.860commit ourselves to radical unlearning. So why is unlearning vital for liberation?
00:02:51.300Well, since we're in an omnicide, it's important that we not waste time, energy, hope,
00:02:58.360resources or vitality on false starts. And so if you ask me, capitalism doesn't monopolize
00:03:06.840the possibility of being, say, efficient or effective. I support us being incredibly
00:03:11.940efficient and effective in the service of collective liberation. But the thing is,
00:03:17.360so many of us are swirling in illusion. Maybe that's lies that our teacher told us.
00:03:21.960Perhaps it's propaganda. Could be algorithmic biases when we're online. Maybe it's corporate
00:03:28.340media spin, for our loved ones that consume the corporate media, could just be our oppressive
00:03:33.680socialization. So then here we are trying to make a difference in the world, whether it's
00:03:38.740surviving in a crisis or supporting our community members surviving, wanting to be our best selves.
00:03:46.020But if we haven't addressed all of those illusions, folks typically end up perpetuating them
00:03:53.080unintentionally, which is totally to be expected when we reflect on the politics of knowing.
00:04:00.200So the thing about unlearning is it helps us heal our perception. So then when we're together
00:04:07.320in community and we're trying to vision solutions for ourselves, for our loved ones,
00:04:13.080we're able to perceive more clearly. And that helps us make our impact more consistent with
00:04:19.240our intentions. I know much of your work emphasizes the importance of decolonial discernment
00:04:25.560in liberation pedagogy. And I really resonate with this call in terms of examining where we
00:04:32.460draw inspiration and source information from. So can you speak to the importance of sourcing
00:04:38.100or how we can recognize liberation pedagogy that has gone through the process of unlearning
00:04:44.340versus that which sounds liberatory, but will ultimately commit more harm in the long run?
00:04:50.860That's such an important question related to discernment. And so unfortunately,
00:04:57.280if you ask me in a place like, say, the settler colonial US today, there's a real shortage of
00:05:03.540those kinds of movement educational spaces where we can come together and be deeply decolonial in
00:05:11.480our discernment. So in the absence of those spaces, folks are doing the best that they can.
00:05:17.160Maybe they try to do consciousness-raising work, but in spaces that aren't very promising.
00:05:23.600So here are a couple of forms of discernment around that. For instance, if some folks go to
00:05:29.580passive consumption, maybe they're buying a product, say it got advertised as an online class.
00:05:37.380So that kind of transaction, it might make business people money, but that kind of monetized commercial space was never intended to get us free.
00:05:48.900And the thing is, liberatory education is an active process.
00:05:54.480Or another example would be, say, call-out culture on social media, where strangers sometimes
00:06:00.920are trying to delve into these incredibly intricate topics via tweets, via memes, via
00:06:10.680And those are really recipes for harm, for false advertising, sometimes miseducation.
00:06:17.020And it's easy for that to be obvious to me as someone who's trained in feminist and decolonial pedagogy for years, someone who's researched those areas profusely as an intellectual, but most people don't have graduate degrees in women's studies.
00:06:31.480And so that's why it's really important, if you ask me, to focus on audaciously grassroots spaces, so spaces that are not censored by funders, right, spaces that are not solely monetized, but say in the sort of spirit of an amazing organization today, Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi,
00:06:55.240supporting a shift from transactional relationships to transformational relationships.
00:07:02.660So say like in the container of Liberation Spring, a space where we can come together
00:07:07.720collectively to unlearn, to remember, to imagine, so we can be more decolonial in that discernment.
00:07:16.840And that's not hidden behind a paywall, right? I don't have some fancy foundation funding,
00:07:21.900no familial support, no savings, no trust fund. And we've been 100% donation-based,
00:07:29.560pay what you can. No one turned away for lack of funds since the inception of the project
00:07:34.580five years ago. And that also ensures that the space can be more magnificently honest
00:07:41.280because more folks are able to come through more expansively. And so then collectively,
00:07:47.440it's not like we're just isolated in little echo chambers or silos of like-minded folks.
00:07:54.820Our dialogue and our visioning can be kaleidoscopic. It can be that much more expansive.
00:08:01.680I'd really like to now orient listeners to the perennial impact of freedom schools and
00:08:07.380how their legacy informs your own work. So can you speak to the orientation of freedom schools
00:08:13.120that flourished amidst the civil rights movement, as well as the simultaneous movements that
00:08:18.540question the objective and authoritarian nature of knowledge production.
00:08:23.460Totally. Well, you know, that is such an important sort of context to ground in if we're going to
00:08:31.020take seriously that pivot that you just invoked. So as people are really deepening their awareness
00:08:38.700of the crisis that we're in, which are actually multiple intersecting crises, it is non-negotiable
00:08:47.180if we're going to get free, if we're going to make it through this, to learn with humility
00:08:52.320from the folks that have come before that have always already known that capitalism
00:10:45.180raising the point that their communities,
00:10:47.040children, and future were being integrated
00:10:49.240into a system that inherently devalued their life,
00:10:52.300that they would be adopted into a system
00:10:54.220that would ultimately erase their being.
00:10:57.580Now your work not only recognizes the feasibility of alternatives to the academic industrial complex, but it also exemplifies the importance of unlearning. So what is the history of Liberation Spring, if you wouldn't mind sharing that? And how was it started? What is the offering? And perhaps more personally, why did you feel the space was critically important for your community?
00:11:22.120You know, when I was in a PhD program and sort of on the track to becoming a professor within academia, I was deeply unsatisfied with the sort of lack of intellectual rigor within academic spaces in the settler U.S.0.98
00:11:42.360And this is in part coming from having this amazing experience over the course of my entire0.99
00:11:50.460life of being an active participant in different, right, movement-based educational spaces.
00:11:57.740So whether it was a DIY skillshares, consciousness-raising groups, having documentary nights
00:12:03.580at a co-op every Sunday night that I lived out when I was an undergrad, right, doing
00:12:07.480book studies for years on end and being able to be so animated by the vibrancy of folks coming
00:12:17.860together consensually, not because they have to for certification, because they care, not just
00:12:24.620because it's what they were told to do by their family or by their brother culture or sort of
00:12:29.440socialization and directly rooted in the service of something that's meaningful in this moment in
00:12:38.120history. So not, again, just because we were told that we need a particular diploma to be able to
00:12:45.480get a career, but unto itself because it is important. And so five years ago, after having
00:12:53.220done, a career of work within the academy, but then also always on the side, right, really having
00:13:00.960my heart in these community-based sites of learning and unlearning that could actually
00:13:06.720support our collective liberation, where people were in it because they cared, not just sort of
00:13:12.780more for the careerism or because they had to feed their kids and that was the only way they
00:13:17.240could imagine being able to pay the rent, I just really saw the way in which that was detrimental
00:13:25.780to the process of knowledge production, of knowledge sharing, the way that academic spaces
00:13:33.960and institutions, for sure in the humanities and the social sciences, so the specific realms that
00:13:39.800I have experienced them personally, weren't holding their knowledge production up to the
00:13:47.940level of scrutiny, right, of community-based spaces where you're going to hear it if you're
00:13:53.300making something up about someone, if you're being inaccurate, right, if you're embellishing,
00:13:57.560right, if you're just kind of tokenizing someone or being extractivist.
00:14:01.600And so for me, sure, personally, intellectual rigor is important to me.
00:14:06.540And so that wasn't satisfying as an unapologetic nerd who is very driven by curiosity, but beyond
00:14:13.760myself personally, being in an omnicide and pretending at a job, like you're going through
00:14:22.240the motions that are actually deep or intelligent, when you know that you're not actually scratching
00:14:28.240the surface of the impact that we're capable of, was completely unethical for me. And so I was
00:14:34.720committed to taking a leap to seeing, right, if some kind of grassroots alternative would
00:14:42.180resonate with folks five years ago. And it did. Frankly, before I even left for that PhD program,
00:14:47.820I remember before taking off, being on a beach once, and one of my dear sisters from college,
00:14:54.400Niyali, sharing to me, I'm so excited for when you come back from Hawaii and you teach my children
00:15:01.660what you learned. And so that, for me, before even starting this doctoral program, was a form
00:15:08.320of accountability that meant so much more than, say, advisors on a committee signing off on whether
00:15:17.660or not I passed a particular project. And so for me, it was in part around honoring our responsibility
00:15:25.000to one another. For someone that was able to work my ass off and access particular spaces,
00:15:31.760not just kind of hoarding that in a career, right, getting tenured, being cozy, myself in
00:15:37.920isolation, but knowing that for those of us that know that we're capable, we can do better than
00:18:33.580sort of problematically hierarchical but from a liberatory perspective if you ask me right say in
00:18:40.920the context of liberation spring i'm not trying to look fancy talking at people but to me i see
00:18:47.880it as an educator as part of my responsibility to support other folks in being able to feel
00:18:55.180even more of an embodied sense of their agency, their power, their capacity, so that then in
00:19:04.580all of the spaces that they touch moving forward for the rest of their lives, they'll be able to
00:19:11.320know what the possibilities and the promises are and potentially really make the most of that,
00:19:18.540as opposed to, say, in traditional academic settings and other industries where this kind
00:19:25.720of careerist setup that really centers self-promotion and individualism is so often rooted in people
00:19:33.440trying to look fancier than other people on a pedestal. It's about their names. It's not about
00:19:38.440the community. And frankly, also for a whole lot of us, that's totally culturally incompetent.0.86
00:19:43.920And so that's also something that's so special about doing community education
00:19:48.060is really playing with that power dynamic to be able to support people in their body,
00:19:55.360in their voice, feeling into an expanded sense of their power together.
00:20:02.740Wow. So powerful. It's hard to imagine what a different world we would have if our education
00:20:09.920system was different. I mean, that's the easy way to say it, but yeah, I could imagine people
00:20:18.700would really be changed if they had this type of care and engagement. Well, I'd like to transition
00:20:26.060to a conversation that recognizes the appeal and pull that conventional academia has upon so many
00:20:32.520of us. We pursue academia as a lifestyle, a place of respite or engagement, a pathway to
00:20:39.900meaningful change. And in that process, we pour so much of ourselves into a system that is often
00:20:46.280hostile and at worst, incredibly traumatic. As someone who has spent a great deal of time
00:20:52.200in traditional higher education, I'm wondering where you think healing from this trauma fits in
00:20:58.180liberation pedagogy and community education, does it go hand in hand with unlearning?
00:21:05.220Absolutely. I see that healing is absolutely indispensable to everything that we're talking
00:21:11.180about. And it's also super contextual, right? So healing our relationship with learning is
00:21:18.080going to look different for different folks. It has a lot to do with our positionality.
00:21:22.760So we know that some folks were disproportionately told in school that they were gifted, that they were exceptional, that they were special, especially, for example, say the super privileged tech bros in Silicon Valley that partially feel emboldened to act like gods upon the rest of us because of that kind of hubris.
00:21:47.480So, right, for some of us that create in the realm of the philosophy of race, there's this
00:21:52.500idea that's called epistemologies of ignorance.
00:21:56.360And so this entire field, epistemologies of ignorance, looks at the way that ignorance
00:22:07.920So very systemic forms of knowing and unknowing within the dominant society, whereby some
00:22:16.380folks end up becoming deeply ignorant about power, about history, and about most of the planet
00:22:23.780because of, right, in part how narrowly limited their curricula was. So those folks might need
00:22:31.660a little bit of a reality check in terms of humility. Frankly, that's a gift that'll keep
00:22:36.580on giving, that'll support them opening up to deepening in awareness, to dilating their
00:22:42.420perspective. But then other folks might have been stigmatized, pathologized, traumatized in school
00:22:49.220settings, especially settings that didn't cultivate their potential. So those folks might be holding
00:22:55.280a whole lot of wisdom and experiential knowledge, but that might not have ever really been validated
00:23:02.280or recognized in an educational setting, except maybe if someone was wanting to, say, tokenize
00:23:08.140them. Maybe somebody wanted to extract from them. And so for me, it's important to support those
00:23:13.640participants and acknowledging the awareness that they carry. So there's so much that we could get
00:23:19.660into here, but both of those currents alongside a whole lot of others are at play simultaneously
00:23:27.000when we're trying to sort of recalibrate what it might feel like to be unlearning and remembering
00:23:34.360and imagining together. Yes, I love hearing that. Imagining together and learning together.
00:23:42.140So much power in that. Well, Anjali, I'd be remiss to not bring inaccessibility into this
00:23:49.100conversation in terms of the for-profit nature of education, as well as the myth that for many,
00:23:55.460education should have a fixed endpoint. So perhaps I can begin by asking what you see are
00:24:01.780the greatest ramifications of the corporatization of educational systems and the limitations that
00:24:07.800it imposes on the cultivation of knowledge. And then how this also severely limits the
00:24:13.900accessibility of learning, which is to say that it's not so much that people don't want to engage
00:24:19.040in continued education, but that we've been removed from that space by a profit-driven system.
00:24:24.880Totally. So, you know, around knowledge production, something that is so dangerous there is knowledge is not just some other commodity to be sort of stamped out in some sort of industrial assembly line like we're in a factory.
00:24:42.560But the thing is, especially in the past quarter century in the settler U.S., that is how knowledge has been getting created in the academy, right?
00:24:51.400Since the academy has become so unapologetically corporatized and neoliberal.
00:24:59.020And so that's not the same if the so-called commodity in question, right, isn't, say, sneakers, but it's knowledge, it's awareness.
00:25:07.960And so that distortion there is one that I sincerely invite people to take incredibly seriously. What are the ramifications of that on what we think we know and what we might actually not know?
00:25:22.640And around that piece in particular, right, related to accessibility, to sort of take it back historically. So in the settler U.S., colonizers mainstreamed these educational institutions that were within walls.
00:25:40.120And just like, right, say, folks from the U.S. do when they're in this sort of missionary way, exporting U.S.-style approaches to education throughout the rest of the planet, and oftentimes with the best of intentions, thinking that they're doing good, one of the things that is so harmful about that is the sort of lack of acknowledging what was always already going on.
00:26:08.580So, for example, for me, my mother didn't graduate from 10th grade. She had to drop out of school to help my grandmother pay the bills. And my grandmother and my mother are two of the wisest people I have ever had the honor of meeting in my entire life, didn't have a whole lot to do with institutionalized education ever.
00:26:27.300And so since I was little, it was always so fascinating for me to try to figure out how the mainstream and how educational spaces were so unfathomably oblivious to how much wisdom my mother and my grandmother had.
00:26:47.540So to me, I really invite people to actually kind of flip the script when it comes to any sort of a priori assumption that what's going on on campus needs to be broadened and needs to be more accessible, kind of in the way that you were getting into a little while back when you mentioned, say, towards the end of Dr. MLK's life.
00:27:11.440He said, right, and I'm paraphrasing, right, I'm concerned that my people are integrating into a burning building, right? So one of these formidable critiques of, right, diversifying the Titanic, so to speak, like if only there were more people of color on the Titanic without realizing that's not the only game in town.
00:27:31.760That's actually one principal way that diversionary campaigns monopolize our precious attention.0.84
00:27:41.080So here specifically thinking that maybe the university is arguably the most important form of education that then can kind of invisibilize earth-based education, right?
00:27:55.640all sorts of different apprenticeship models and community education that so often might actually
00:28:01.560happen, right, in gardens or beyond walls, outdoors, but that doesn't typically get
00:28:09.520recognized for its merit, for its importance. And so that's also one of the things that I
00:28:16.340so look forward to more of our movements taking seriously is sort of cutting our losses with
00:28:24.520mainstream institutions and really feeling into our capacity as creators to innovate alternatives
00:28:32.000and to remember what has come before. I was on Liberation Springs website and you highlight
00:28:39.200the importance of subsistence farming, seed saving, celestial navigation, and warrior training,
00:28:46.180just to name a few, while also drawing upon scholars who remain dedicated to centering
00:28:51.260land-based pedagogy. What is the interdependence between land-based experience,
00:28:57.800ancestral knowledge, and unlearning? You know, kind of like I was just getting into,
00:29:03.980so many mainstream approaches to education in the settler U.S. today are deeply disconnected0.87
00:29:11.840from the earth. So for example, that might look like this major agenda afoot that's,0.89
00:29:18.760if you ask me from a, say, water protector perspective, deeply misguided around educational
00:29:24.960technology that, and I'm sure you may be familiar with this, right, is trying to get gadgets in
00:29:30.360front of more privileged children. But that agenda is so often, right, not particularly holistic.
00:29:38.120What do I mean by that? So for one, say, it's usually silent on the question of
00:29:42.540the child labor that's producing those gadgets, to it's particularly sort of silent around the
00:29:49.940environmental toll of mining, the so-called rare earth minerals for the gadgets to be created.
00:29:56.380It's not particularly aware of or concerned about the carbon footprint of data consumption.
00:30:03.640So again, not the most sort of holistic or full spectrum agenda or awareness by any stretch of
00:30:09.420the imagination. And while there's definitely room for, right, certain forms of educational
00:30:15.200technology that involve devices around questions of accessibility, right, that we do need to take
00:30:21.760quite seriously, if we're going to heal from ecocide, we've also got to talk about that kind
00:30:28.500of ecological illiteracy in education, right, that sort of jumps to, right, tech is saving us,
00:30:37.000or say a plant identification app saving us without acknowledging, no, there's actually
00:30:43.840no bypassing, taking it back to the seeds, taking it back to farming, right?
00:30:51.480Say if you do live through a crisis with food shortages, so whether it's say when I was
00:30:57.060in Honolulu for graduate school and there were tsunami warnings and I would go to the
00:31:03.200grocery stores and I would see empty shelves, right? Especially for a lot of folks in particular
00:31:09.240areas, especially urban or suburban areas in the US, if maybe they've had the privilege to not be
00:31:15.900used to that, here's one of those forms of ignorance that I'm talking about. They might
00:31:21.420not realize how important farming is. But then when you experience that kind of crisis, you realize,
00:31:27.340Ooh, actually a lot of those apps were optional, but food sovereignty is not optional. That's a need. Some of those other things were actually wants, right? Or celestial navigation for so many of us ancestrally, that kind of orientation, knowing where we are in both time and space, based off of our relationship with the stars and with other celestial bodies,
00:31:55.820is one way that we can remember with humility
00:32:00.000these incredible intellectual traditions of our ancestors
00:32:05.500that are rooted above and below, right?
00:33:41.580that can be more self-determined, right?
00:33:44.980That is not rooted in industrial extraction
00:33:48.900a la these forms of, right, neoliberal economic policy that are decimating so many of our loved
00:33:57.740ones and families in the so-called global South, right, to benefit consumers, principally in the
00:34:04.800so-called global North, that are actually, many of them waking up to right now, similarly in some
00:34:12.900ways quite vulnerable because of the sort of capitalist configuration of social relations.
00:34:20.940And so that's also part of what is so important in this moment of awakening is not just being
00:34:28.500very cavalier and talking about our relationship with the earth in poetic or in romantic terms,
00:34:36.180but really being specific, like our lives depended upon it because our lives depend on it.
00:35:06.180I'd like to ask you about the importance of both questioning legitimacy in academia,
00:35:29.980as well as the necessity to create something beyond critique.
00:35:33.400From my own experience, I recognize so much of what is discussed in traditional academia is deeply rooted in critique. And while these conversations are vitally necessary and eye-opening for many, I also recognize that many of us become stymied in this process. So do you think it is important that we take our critique into creation? And if so, what tools do we need in this process?
00:35:57.140Absolutely. It's so incredibly important. And, you know, that is part of why the tagline of Liberation Spring is pulling weeds and planting seeds, because I have observed over the course of my life, so many folks might really valorize one of those projects without understanding the importance of the other.
00:36:17.200So some folks are super into pulling weeds. Other folks are really into planting seeds. But for folks such as myself that were actually raised growing food, both are indispensable.
00:36:27.520And so the thing about critique in academic spheres is that, especially for folks that are in spaces where, I'm just going to name names, post-structuralism and post-modernism are all the rage and are still trending, there's a lot of disproportionate focus within those textual communities or those forms of meaning-making on deconstruction.
00:36:56.340And it was so funny for me to observe that, right, as I transitioned into adulthood and academia, having spent some time in my youth behind the orange curtain.
00:37:09.260And what I mean by that is in so-called Orange County, California, because I was surrounded in part by hipsters and I noticed so many philosophical similarities between the hipsters of my youth and postmodernists in large part, right?
00:37:26.460kind of feeling very cozy on the sidelines, not necessarily creating anything beyond critique,
00:37:35.480but then upon invitation to share, well, tell me what your values are. Tell me what your principles
00:37:42.720are, right? Maybe some of your deconstruction and some of your critique is on point,
00:37:47.420but that's not going to feed us at the end of the day. That's not going to support our getting free.
00:37:53.720And some folks might really sort of cavalierly share as a sort of response. Yeah, but you can't expect one person to do all the things. And while that might be the case, if we zoom out and look at the big picture, if we're going to survive and if we're going to get free, we do need to be infusing substantial time and energy and resources and intentionality into visioning what our dreams are.
00:38:23.080And I especially emphasize that because, frankly, as someone who has what gets medicalized as chronic post-traumatic stress, so to speak, I know intimately what trauma does to our imaginations.
00:38:38.680So often it co-ops our imaginations, right? And then our energy can get sort of siloed into catastrophizing and worst case scenarios and just shutting down perceived threats at the expense of imagining the miracles that could be right around the corner if only we were in a space to be able to perceive them.
00:39:05.020So that moving beyond critique has everything to do with healing or perception, if you ask me.
00:39:12.160I grew up behind the orange veil, as you called it. And yeah, it's really interesting when people
00:39:18.920just critique, but then they don't share their values or they're not actually engaged. But it's
00:39:24.800like an armchair philosopher kind of critique that it's like, where is this coming from?
00:39:29.640Like your pure intellect, but what about your experience? How are you actually engaging
00:39:33.720with the work or with the community. I was kind of giggling to myself thinking about all of my
00:39:40.640own past experiences there. Totally. In your bio, you mentioned the importance of distinguishing
00:39:47.180impact from intention. So I'm curious to hear how as an educator, you find the balance between
00:39:53.760creating a safe and regenerative learning space while still pushing students to move through the
00:39:59.220very thorny conversations and introspection that's required. You know, how can we prepare
00:40:05.880ourselves and each other to have challenging discussions? You know, there are just so many
00:40:12.780wide open possibilities in that realm pedagogically that it's such an honor for me to be able to
00:40:19.160support folks taking more seriously. So one of the things that say in the context of liberation
00:40:25.100spring classes, I really centralize at the outset of every single circle is a commitment to
00:40:34.800unwavering honesty. And would you know that for so many participants, it is such a relief
00:40:43.900to know that you're able to be real. And so I know that in a lot of sort of say, especially,
00:40:52.280And again, I will name names because their survival is dependent upon it to keep it real.
00:40:57.080Diversity and inclusion, sort of liberal multicultural spaces.0.94
00:41:00.900There's been this form of storytelling that has gotten sort of concretized within so many people's imaginations that shit's about to get really hard, right?0.65
00:41:11.840There's a focus on difficult dialogues and people are almost bracing themselves, right?0.53
00:41:17.880For some oppressed peoples, like I'm about to be extracted from, I'm about to be expected to, right, kick down exhaustive amounts of, right, intellectual, political, ethical, emotional labor.
00:41:29.320And then more privileged folks that might not be as versed in some of these realms are almost sort of masochistically and anticipatorily, right, apprehensive.
00:41:41.400And so I entirely sort of flip the script and pivot the entry point into this kind of transformative work, right, in part through centering the miracle that is truthfulness and a commitment to honesty, right, and tapping into the pleasure of curiosity, right?
00:42:03.380Because especially as someone that does have a few graduate degrees, it has been astounding
00:42:10.820to me to witness, right, on so many campuses, how normalized it is for folks to presume