Theorizing Justice Imperatives Through Digital Collaging and Collaborative Creative Visioning Work

• In Event: Justice as Praxis: Cultivating Community, Centering Creativity, and Building Viable Pathways for Equitable Educational Systems

Abstract

Our work operates on the notion that art has always been part of theory and theory making, particularly for People of Color. Creative acts can, as Kelley (2002) described, “render the kinds of dreams and futures social movements are capable of producing” (p. 11). We build with Anzaldúan (2015) conceptions of creativity as theory making that taps into multiple levels of consciousness. This work allows us to: (re)organize logics; break the binds of white heteropatriarchal academic traditions; and centralize joy and healing. Thus, we (Justice as Praxis Collective members) theorized visions of justice through creative production. Specifically, we curated: (1) digital collages during a justice-oriented arts-based theory workshop and we later (2) created acrylic-based paintings to tenaciously fight against and materialize powerful visions of freedom. Collaging and painting supported us in relishing in the delights of true justice we constructed. We remained keenly aware of the logics and structures of injustice that seek to stifle such liberatory praxis. This paper artistically analyzes how our individual and collaborative (n= 15) creative visioning work shaped our visions of justice, theory-making, and our justice-oriented imperatives concerning equitable educational systems in the 21st century. We provide visual and textual explorations of justice grounded in notions of radical hope (Grant, 2021; Kelley, 2002; Lee Boggs, 2012), fugitive practices (Campt, 2017; Patel, 2016; Player, Coles, Gonzalez Ybarra, & The Fugitive Literacies Collective, 2020), and Women of Color feminist conceptions of knowledge (Anzaldúa, 2015; Lorde, 2007). We refuse to wait for societal and educational policies to make good on their promises or for nation-state educational spaces to affirm who we are and who we can become. Instead, our creative justice theory-making, created space for us to turn inward to our home places that already exist (and have existed for centuries) to build now and into the future. Our cultural ways of knowing inform our real time existence and thus inform our futurity.

References:
Anzaldua, G. (2015). Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality (Latin America Otherwise) (Illustrated ed.). Duke University Press Books.

Boggs, G. L. (2012). The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century (First Edition, Foreword by Danny Glover and Afterword with Immanuel Wallerstein ed.). University of California Press.

Campt, T. M. (2017). Listening to Images (Illustrated ed.). Duke University Press Books.
Grant, C. A. (2021). James Baldwin and the American Schoolhouse (1st ed.). Routledge.
Kelley, R. D. (2002). Freedom dreams: The black radical imagination. Beacon Press.

Lorde, A. (2007). Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Reprint ed.). Crossing Press.
Patel, L. (2016). Pedagogies of Resistance and Survivance: Learning as Marronage. Equity &
Excellence in Education, 49(4), 397–401. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2016.1227585

Player, G. D., Coles, J. A., Ybarra, M. G., & The Fugitive Literacies Collective. (2020). Enacting
Educational Fugitivity with Youth of Color: A Statement/Love Letter from the Fugitive Literacies Collective. The High School Journal, 103(3), 140–156. https://doi.org/10.1353/hsj.2020.0009

Authors

• Grace D. Player, University of Connecticut

• Justin A. Coles, University of Massachusetts - Amherst