Disrupting Displacements: Making Knowledges for Futures Otherwise in Gullah/Geechee Nation

Abstract

In this article, I consider the politics of making knowledge and building theory about displacement that has as its goal transformative social change. Drawing on my experience conducting research as a member of the Gullah/Geechee Sustainability Think Tank, I engage with strands of Black feminist thought to consider the politics of pursuing what I call itineraries of verification. I propose a thick conception of the politics of knowledge production as best understood as a bundle of social relations. By thick conception, I mean to inextricably link the products of knowledge production practices (e.g., academic publications, data sets, and other artifacts that are produced through acts of research and systematized knowing) and the institutional, social, interpersonal, and political economic relations that are made and reified in the process. Central to this set of concerns is how social formations are implicitly or explicitly reproduced or reworked in the knowledge production process. In particular, I am skeptical of the assumption that knowledge about systems of power is inherently disruptive of those systems. With respect to research on displacement generally, or in my work with Gullah/Geechees specifically, this critique invites reflection on the political stakes of ways of knowing about processes we wish to disrupt, rework, or abolish.