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The struggle is not singular. It is both transnational and transhistorical: "Malcolm X said our present local struggle was transnationally and transhistorically significant —not just this life but our past life" (Yang, 2015, p. 228). Trans is the prefix that means across. Within this context, the struggle moves across times and space to create a lineage. The lineage and genealogies of struggle interconnect to recognize the pluralism in the fight for sovereignty. This pluralism refuses universal claims to truth, while simultaneously remaining open to dialogue among various ways of knowing. Thus, the struggle in not an individual pursuit; rather it links and interdepends on the strengths beyond time to sharpen praxis of liberation.

The structure of colonialism and oppression are neither singular structures nor isolated occurrences. Oppression is interconnected in its pursuit to systematically destroy and erase all that is deviant from the structure’s myopic view of normal. Trying to counter an intergenerational virus by only focusing on singular, linear conceptions of time as well as struggle is one way to be misinformed in the praxis of liberation. This misinformation is not only profitable to structures of colonialism and oppression but also works to reaffirmed dominant epistemologies of resistance as well as statistics.

The birth of statistics as "the science of state data" (Yang, 2015, p. 229) resonates with Toni Morrison’s 1975 speech called A Humanist View. Morrison describes how both science and data are inventions created specifically not to recognize atrocities and violations. Rather, science and data are used to further concoct diseases of violence and market them as curable substances. Morrison analyzes a book entitled The Historical Statistics of the United States from Colonial Times to 1957 to illustrate the historical mandate that statistics was created to follow. We recall Juxtaposing the Dawn and the Dark of Human Rights when thinking about ways to clearly express the juxtaposition between K. Wayne Yang’s Afterword: Will Human Rights Be Decolonizing? and Morrison’s A Humanist View:

I think how “statistics” come from the German statistic, meaning “the science of state data.” I think how the East German State (GDR) stopped recording suicides in 1977, and how suicides were the basis for Emile Durkheim’s (1897) sociology of the Urban condition — K. Wayne Yang (2015, p. 229)

Historical statistics [missing] are not required…Its job is done, and very well done, and 153 years of Black history is dispatched on pages 769 and 770, which is about twice the amount of space devoted to rice. Now that’s simply what economic indices are like. But it’s also very frequently what American history’s concept of Blacks is…Pretty much like the historical statistics is Black American history: a separate book, a separate chapter, or a separate section of origins and consequences of slavery, all of which is related to production and legislature, very seldom to the very fabric of life and culture in this country. History is percentiles. History is the thoughts of great men. And the description of eras. — Toni Morrison, (1975, p. 1, my emphasis)

Recognizing the project of statistics to intentionally include and exclude lived experiences from historical and present narratives, we wonder about the possibilities to refuse dominant narratives of statistics to illuminate the lineage of resistance that is frequently hidden. We wonder about decolonial pedagogy as multiple ways to bring together what is intentionally separated as well as to re-contextualize the narratives of liberation as plural ways to be in relation. Here arises another juxtaposition between critical pedagogy and decolonial pedagogy:

Whereas critical pedagogy highlights the human as the unit of liberation, a red pedagogy already understands how the human cannot be exceptionalized from land, water, and from “nature.” — K. Wayne Yang (2015, p. 227)

Freire situates the work of liberation in the minds of the oppressed, as a humanist self-critique, whereas decolonizing projects (e.g. Fanon) always position the work of liberation in the particularities of colonization and the structures of the colonization process — Michalinos Zembylas (2017, p. 494)

A question arises: in what ways does decolonial pedagogy open futures to recognize relationality among liberation struggles that are both transnational and transhistorical? The journey continues…

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References

Morrison, T. (1975). Portland State, Black studies center public dialogue. Pt. 2" May 30, 1975 with Toni Morrison (panel discussion) [Transcript. transcribed by Keisha E. MacKenzie]. (Original work broadcast May 30, 1975).

Yang, K.W. (2015). Afterword: Will human rights be decolonizing? In S. Katz & A. Spero (Eds.) Bringing human rights education to U.S. classrooms (pp. 225-235)

Zembylas, M. (2017). Re-contextualising human rights education: some decolonial strategies and pedagogical/curricular possibilities. Pedagogy, Culture & Society 25(4), 487-499.