(Re)visioning Futures Through Decolonial Speculations and Dreaming

• In Event: Decoloniality Dialogues Collective: (Re)storying, (Re)membering, and (Re)visioning Spirals for Decolonial Possibilities

Abstract

In this final paper, the authors collectively spiral to (re)vision futures and futurity through methods of dreaming and speculation. (Re)imaging and working toward an “otherwise” that is no longer beholden to the violences of modern/colonial power structures is central to decolonial feminist praxis (Andreotti, 2015), and is the primary objective of this paper. In our weekly meetings, workshops, and community engagements we regularly dream and speculate together as we (re)imagine the possible futures we are working for, honor those who we are accountable to, and shed pieces of our decolonial jackets. Thus, in this paper we engage in and model a decolonial feminist practice of speculative storytelling and dreaming (e.g., Machado de Oliveira, 2021; McKittrick, 2015; Lorde, 1984; paperson, 2017). We draw on our personal stories, collective reflection, and journaling praxis to illustrate the possibilities of “dreaming of things (not/yet/necessarily) seen and unseen, felt and unfelt, known and unknown” (Piere, 2020, p. 396) and “liberation yet to materialize” (Bell, Canham, Dutta & Fernández, 2019, p. 850).

Dreaming, as we embody it within this session, brings together memories, experiences, and emotions all together into a narrative that facilitates a move away from the linearity and rationality privileged in the modern/colonial world order, allowing us to move and flow in different ways, especially when we do so collectively. We invite participants into our collective dreaming space through our own interwoven storywork that we layer together with other reflections. Speculation, as we embody it within this session, weaves together past-present-future in ways that highlight the transformative possibilities afforded within decolonial imaginings. We invite participants to use speculation to (re)imagine educational contexts that are informed by decolonial feminisms and grounded in themes of relationality and liberation.

Finally, we invite attendees into different dimensions of our dreaming and speculative praxis through journaling and speculative writing prompts. This would involve documenting their own (re)imaginings of a world yet to be. In conversation with panelists and audience participants, we will engage in collective dialogue that interrogates critical questions about justice and possibility in the context of demands for education justice, liberation, and decolonization in order to imagine what else could be in “a future already present and past” (Peña-Pincheira & Allweiss, 2022).

Authors

• Olivia Ann Furman, Michigan State University

• Unifier Dyer, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Alexandra Allweiss, Michigan State University