Dancing the Diasporas: Unpacking the role of embodied storytelling in remembering and reimagining histories

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 3:20 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Podcasts as Public Scholarship: (Re)Imagining Theories in Everyday Life (Table 6)

Abstract

Unjust systems of control can be perpetuated by education systems that subscribe to a Cartesian mind-body duality that undervalues or completely ignores the body. Many education researchers have called for the need to understand how power moves through, with, and in relation to the physical body within learning spaces (Enriquez et al., 2015; Grumet, 1985; Luke, 1992). Failing to understand how dominant values and biases about learning inform how bodies are regulated, disciplined, inscribed upon, and controlled in seemingly “neutral” and “skills-based” learning contexts, only makes it easier for this sort of hegemony to persist and to thrive.
Since at least the 15th century, Black bodies have been subjugated to multiple intersecting and compounding injustices inflicted by Euro-American systems of domination and oppression. Yet our bodies also hold within them “forms of power” (Welsh et al., 2019) that sustain community and that can be activated, cultivated, and spread through our collective dance practices. Knowledge about how to resist, persist, and thrive have been preserved in our bodies through the cultural, traditional, social, and folk dances that have enlivened our celebrations and performances. A deeper understanding of how these “forms of power” operate and the role they play in movement building is a critical area for education research interested in better serving these communities.
[BLINDED] is a podcast that unpacks how the movement and dance practices of African Diasporic communities can help promote multimodal, community-driven, and democratizing research methodologies. The inspiration comes from the West African tradition of oral and embodied storytelling often carried out by griots. Griots are traveling poets, musicians, genealogists, and historians who preserve and tell stories via a variety of modalities. The project honors the multimodal legacies of the griots by integrating dance, performance, and oral tradition within the medium of the podcast. The podcast centers the question: what is the role of dance and embodiment in remembering and re-imagining the lessons of the past? The podcast features conversations with scholars and researchers from various disciplines who engage in African Diasporic dance and performance practices in ways that inform how they ask research questions, engage communities in the research process, understand “data”, challenge unjust systems, and much more. Episodes also feature “movement breaks”, in which the hosts take listeners through an embodied practice and invite them to reflect on how the episode’s themes can inform their own experiences.
The body is the medium through which we experience all modalities, therefore an embodied lens lends itself to a nuanced understanding of expression, communication, and connection. A focus on African Diasporic dance and performance practices offers a window into how power moves through bodies, spaces, and time. In valuing embodied memory from the African Diaspora, the podcast aims to support education research and practice invested in bringing about more justice oriented futures rooted in embodied, critical and creative understandings of the past.

Authors

• OreOluwa Badaki, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Azsanee Truss, University of Pennsylvania