Moving Through Acknowledgement

Abstract

Practices of acknowledgement are presented as ways of connecting human knowledges of mind and body with readings of essence, affect and ecology in ways that hold potential to actively respond to perceived limitations and barriers to interdependence and healing. Yet the ways in which time and space have been constructed within a European imperial lens has created a conjoined knowledge system which elevates itself above all other ways of knowing. This elitism has taken effect primarily through repeated acts of violence upon bodies, minds and consciousness across the period named the Anthropocene. As a result, there is a need to resort to the wisdom of our somas, through sensing beyond vision and speech to do the work of liberating us from the hold of the partial and limited forms of colonial knowledge systems. We strongly advocate that we call in a new dispensation of being human in which we invite in approaches towards acknowledgement which can open us to processing the pain held within our minds and bodies. By doing so, we feel it will allow access to a pluriverse - a reality of many worlds co-operating within a single planet - of redemptive knowledges. This, we feel will entail acts of reparative justice which have the potential to heal the wounds of a violet and toxic colonial order. Yet as part of sensing well, in deeply embodied ways, we will also realise that we are all victim to a particularly human, yet also very limited lack of recognition, as a result of ongoing and collective traumas. Such traumas threaten to undermine potentials for admitting the need for reparative healing at the level of both the personal and collective. Sometimes, as we are discovering, breath itself and recollections of connection which embody older knowledges and their deeper meanings, might lead the way towards self and collective reclamation. This, we assert will be a necessary precursor to any movement in the direction of a persistent and reparative justice. We feel access to this will be realised through profound and meaningful acknowledgements across the worlds which exist beyond the modern idea of a unitary world.