RADICAL I OTHERS is a dynamic research strand in the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (VIAD) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) that is dedicated to revealing, reframing and disrupting systems of othering through, with, and in African and African-Diasporic creative practice and critical theory. The term ‘radical’ is used to refer to the kind of self-reflexive unearthing that T. J. Demos calls disrupting “the foundational conditions of reality; a transformative agency of futurity itself”. [i] RADICAL I OTHERS challenges identitarian definitions as essentialising; the visual pause between ‘radical’ and ‘others’ prompts consideration of ‘radical otherness’ as a queering of the notion of otherness, to reach beyond subversion-as-resistance towards building a world where difference nourishes creativity and creativity is part of a network of possible livable worlds.
While the concept of radical otherness points to the binary constructs of self and other, its resignification in positive terms challenges dominant, westernised, heteronormative and colonial narratives of difference. The transmutation of the term ‘other’ is used to frame historical and political hope, in which the flows and ruptures of the black radical imagination can play out as an active, dynamic force towards building new futures for black livability.
Central to this research strand is the concept of world-building through creative practice, both of which are considered as active making-processes that undermine entrenched systems of power and privilege, and foster spaces that embrace diversity and difference. It recognises History’s propensity to repeat itself, and necessitates anti-colonial thought and decolonial practice. By acknowledging the historical marginalisation of BIPOC, [ii] it provides a space to explore how new processes of thinking and making – and world-building – can provide opportunities for rethinking and reclaiming concepts such as life, humanness, freedom, imagination, sovereignty, and strategies for living ‘otherwise’.
By mobilising Practice-Led Research, experimentation and improvisation, RADICAL I OTHERS advocates the fundamental transformation of racist, capitalist, and neo-colonialist structures and systems. Drawing on Pumla Gqola’s [iv] concept of “undoing” the fear through which women and sexual minorities are socialised, RADICAL I OTHERS attempts to unravel the underlying threat of death within a world facing the polycrises of climate disaster and lack of meaningful transformation across race, gender and class.
To be radical is to find new modalities that enable us to read archives against and along the grain and to understand their absences in order to tell stories that have been suppressed, forgotten, or never imagined to have existed. It is to seek the transversal articulations of urgencies that appear parallel, the relational comparisons, the decenterings, and the worldly affiliations that help us think imaginatively about how we are connected rather than forced apart; it is to dig deep into the scorched ground to reveal the invisible. [iii]
RADICAL I OTHERS challenges universalist knowledges by activating the creative agencies of ‘othered’ bodies and their relationships with the world to nurture space for recuperative forms of world-building. In this respect, RADICAL I OTHERS takes its cue from Anthony Bogues, who proposes freedom as a critical human practice; a creative activity that is “rooted and routed through a set of human experiences”. [v] As forms of creative agency, Bogues contends, practices of freedom operate through the “radical imagination”: they “construct new ways of life for us as humans”; “while political action and practice are always vital, the formations of new ways of life emerge from the ground of humans acting, working, through politics, to get somewhere else”. [vi] Creative agencies asserted by African and African-Diasporic artists, who draw on ‘radical imagination’ as a “faculty of capacity” [vii] are considered as catalysts for introducing opportunities for subversive resistance to, refusal of, and rebellion against, hierarchical binary constructs embedded in western discourse and the gendered and racial power relations that these embody.
RADICAL I OTHERS prioritises the production of BIPOC individuals, understanding their creative expressions as both fugitive histories and agents of change amidst multiple crises. By fostering cross-disciplinary and -diasporic collaborations through curatorial, scholarly and creative practices and through its commitment to Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS), RADICAL I OTHERS expands networks of practice-led world-builders across marginalised communities. Through these cross-disciplinary practices, RADICAL I OTHERS seeks to cross diasporic borders and reimagine creative expressions of lived experiences in ways that honour diverse subjectivities. Situating itself within a framework of radical black Pan-African thought, black critical theory, critical race studies and black feminist philosophy, RADICAL I OTHERS insists on the decolonisation of minds, bodies and human relations with the ecosphere, refusing the colonial borders that constrain creative expression and perpetuate neo-colonial hegemony. In delinking from colonial legacies, it acts as a space of recuperation in the afterlives and continuations of epistemic violence. RADICAL I OTHERS acts as a an imaginarium; it cultivates spaces of possibility and potentiality – inviting critical dialogue, imaginative engagement, and consideration of how new modalities of thinking regarding African and African-Diasporic creative practices, as spaces of expression, articulation, and intervention, can provide opportunities for processes of world-building.
In a constantly changing, yet fundamentally untransformed world, RADICAL I OTHERS promotes forms of decolonial world-building through four focus areas.
AIMS OF RESEARCH CONDUCTED UNDER THE RADICAL | OTHERS STRAND ARE TO
RADICAL | OTHER’S FOCUS AREAS
RADICAL FEMINISMS
In this focus area, black feminist analysis provides a framework for critically examining systems of dominance, with their inherent heteropatriarchy and relationships to racial capitalism. Through the lenses of decoloniality and intersectionality, work done under the auspices of RADICAL Feminisms maintains a self-reflexive analysis in relation to gender, sexuality, disability, race and class. Research conducted in this focus area aims to root out the oppressive logics entrenched within these intersecting spheres and advance the quest for livability. Through radical interventions, African and African-Diasporic creative practitioners disrupt normative frameworks of gender and sexuality, while also addressing the legacies of colonial violence and dispossession.
RADICAL PLANETARIES
RADICAL Planetaries is a focus area seeking creative ideas within integrated disciplinary frameworks that challenge visions of life which sustain inequity. RADICAL Planetaries is dedicated to planetary ways of knowing, ways of being and ways of valuing human praxis, as a critical node in the creative and critical practices of life. Working through decolonial, decenterings of disconnection, a radical planetary formation intertwines Radical Black Thought and Indigenous Knowledge Systems to explore African and African-Diasporic creative praxis for its worldbuilding methods and discursive inventions.
RADICAL MOBILITIES
By exploring the politics of movement and displacement within the African diaspora through an intersectional lens, RADICAL Mobilities examines how cultural practitioners navigate borders and boundaries by challenging these divisive legacies of coloniality and globalisation. RADICAL Mobilities are essential to the RADICAL I OTHERS research strand, as they acknowledge and amplify those voices which are often silenced, marginalised, or erased through othering. By interrogating how movement, migration and displacement shape identities and living histories, RADICAL Mobilities challenges dominant narratives of nationhood, citizenship and the architecture of racial capitalism.
RADICAL DIGITALITIES
RADICAL Digitalities explores the intersection of technologies, race, and power, with a specific focus on black digital humanities. Work done in this focus area critically examines the role of digital technologies in shaping and perpetuating systems of oppression and marginalisation, particularly within the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). Black digital humanities and its methodologies engage with culture, history, and socio-politics through digital tools and media, addressing issues of access, representation, and power dynamics in the digital age. Furthermore, RADICAL Digitalities scrutinises technology’s innovations and its inherent connectedness with warfare and genocide. This premise underpins RADICAL Digitalities’ approach to exploring how digital technologies are implicated in conflict and violence, particularly in relation to marginalised communities. Black digital humanities and its methodologies are practiced for their potential to engage with culture, history and socio-politics through digital tools and media, addressing issues of access, representation, and power dynamics through the ‘digital elsewhere’, with its generative possibilities.
SOURCES CITED
[i] Demos, T.J. Radical Futurisms: Ecologies of Collapse, Chronopolitics and Justice-to-Come. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[ii] Black, Indigenous and People of Colour. The acronym considers the intersecting differences of racial othering for peoples identified as indigenes as well as those who are culturally, religiously, ethically, or otherwise marganilised as part of the racial classificatory systems in colonial and neo-colonial histories.
[iII] Ming Tiampo, M. 2022. Roundtable Response, cited in T.J. Demos, What is Radical? A Questionnaire. ArtMargins 10:90. http://direct.mit.edu/artm/article-pdf/10/3/8/1992685/artm_a_00301.pdf
[iv] Gqola, P.D. 2021. Female Fear Factory. Cape Town: Melinda Ferguson Books.
[v] Bogues, A. 2012. And what about the human? Freedom, emancipation, and the radical imagination. Boundary 2 39(3), fall: 29-46:30, 34.
[vi] Bogues, A. Ibid: 41, 45.
[vii] Bogues, A. Ibid.