Black Mothers' Pedagogy for Living: The Khanga, a Black Feminist Methodology — Part 2

• In Event: Radical Acts of Parenting and Kinship

Abstract

To further examine mothering through black feminist methodologies, the presenter in Part II asks the question: How might theorizing with the Khanga create openings for equitable educational practices and knowledge making in the 21st century? And how might black mothers “continue to function, as all human orders of knowledge have done from our origin on the continent of Africa until today, as a language-capacitated form of life” (Wynter, 2003 p. 270)? The presenter takes inspiration from the Khanga and black feminist thought, which as a “theoretical, methodological and political discourse” (Evans-Winters, 2019, p. 18) aims to center the everyday of black women – their agency and liberation as they fight through oppressive systems (Evans-Winters, 2019; hooks, 2000; hooks 1998; McKittrick, 2021). Women in East and Central Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi) and the African diaspora use the Khanga, a ‘speaking’ piece of cloth, as a tool to disrupt patriarchal, political, gendered, sexist, and everyday oppressive systems in the home and community. The Khanga, with the messages and riddles printed on it is also versatile in nature (used as clothing, to carry young children, towel, blanket, scarf, headwrap, pillow, skirt), revealing the creativite praxis and knowledge-making Waswahili women construct to solve problems as well as celebrate the ways of being in/of the community. Theorizing with the Khanga as a black feminist methodology, the presenter will show how everyday knowledge-making practices among Waswahili women can offer alternative methodological approaches to doing educational inquiry. Specifically, the presenter will extrapolate how the Khanga disrupts canonical/Western knowledge making practices while at the same time inviting black joy and black livingness in its creative assemblage rooted in Black Femnist Thought and the Black Radical Tradition. Collins’(1986) theorizing of Black Feminist Thought helps elucidate the power of the Khanga, pointing to the rich and layered tradition that captures the holistic knowledge-making processes and assemblages of stories (written and unwritten), songs, proverbs, riddles, poetics among others that have historically “been produced by ordinary Black women in their roles as mothers, teachers, musicians, and preachers” (p. 16).

Author

• Mariam Rashid, University of Massachusetts - Amherst