Mapping the Decolonial Imagination: Mutual Aid Practice in Political Witchcraft and Kashmiri Scholar-Activism

• In Event: Sociology of Culture Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 10. The Cultural Authority of Science & Medicine

Abstract

Examining imagination and decolonial possibility through networks or collectivities practicing mutual aid—especially those identifying as decolonial—reveals how reciprocal sharing and resource distribution can foster new visions of social possibility within a colonial-capitalist world. These groups, including Kashmiri scholar-activists and political witchcraft communities, engage in non-material mutual aid through knowledge production, collective rituals, and community events that challenge the boundaries of what is considered possible and legitimate. Imagination is deeply linked to both material and social realities, and the process of envisioning decolonial worlds is inseparable from the work of building them. Dominant systems restrict our sense of the possible, but by questioning ontological limits and redrawing inherited cognitive maps, these practices illuminate how imagining alternative realities can lead to transformative social change.

Author

• Apoorvaa Joshi, Rutgers University-New Brunswick