Embodied Ways of Knowing

Question 1

Rethinking emotions

Answer 1

• intentional?
• involve judgments
• socially constructed? “girls are taught fear and disgust for spiders and snakes, affection for fluffy animals and shame for naked bodies” (Jaggar 2008)
• integral to knowledge production

Question 2

Felt Theory

Answer 2

• “We feel our histories as well as think them” (Million)
• Felt experience of colonialism (hurt, pain, anger, rage)
• disrupt sanitized narrative of Canada as peacekeeping
• branded as “bitter” and “biased”

Question 3

How are feelings theory?

Answer 3

no two of us can “see” them distinctly the same way, thus, feelings are theory, important projections about what is happening in our lives. They are also culturally mediated knowledges, never solely individual

Question 4

Decolonize

Answer 4

to understand as fully as possible the form colonialism takes in our own time
- native women need to create their own space to speak

Question 5

felt knowledge

Answer 5

• colonialism is felt by those who experience it
• felt knowledge can incite settlers to bear ethical witness and learn to listen more meaningfully
• Their experience was pain that had to be historicized and taken into account in the public record- provides context for more complex telling

Question 6

La Mestiza

Answer 6

• exists at the intersection of multiple and conflicting identities, worldviews, cultures, values and beliefs
• “mixed-breed,” mixed ancestry (indigenous, African, European)
• Multiplicity, hybridity of identity – pain, contradictions, displacement, inner struggle

Question 7

Mestiza Consciousness

Answer 7

• distinct method of conducting critical analysis
• “A struggle of the flesh”; ”theorize from the flesh”
• learn to juggle cultures

Question 8

Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving/?

Answer 8

• “the question is why knowing about the “culture” of the region, and particularly its religious beliefs and treatment of women, was more urgent than exploring the history of the development of repressive regimes in the region and the U.S. role in this history”
• justify war on terror; obscures U.S. interests
• Reinforces Western superiority
• justify colonial rule
• “Colonial feminism” (Ahmed, 1992)