By: Robert Soden, Jungsuh Lim, Sneha Malani, Feroz Khan, Pamela Cajilig, Xavier Venn A. Asuncion , Rachel Lee
What might it mean to decolonize the science of disasters? How do we come to terms with the complex entanglement of the history of science with colonialism? In what ways does this relationship persist? The stories that disaster research tell about danger, planning, architecture, the environment, and human need are not universal, but rooted in a particular approach to knowledge associated with Western Science and the Enlightenment. Whose worldviews and voices are marginalized by these stories? With what effect? How might the Field Lab itself perpetuate, or challenge, such marginalization? These are the questions we sought to answer together.
The conversations that sparked these ‘makings’ were, for the most part, open-ended. While prompts such as reading material, videos, and pictures were used, much of the discussion was grounded on the lived experiences of the writers as these intertwine with colonial histories, professional practice, everyday observations, and personal anxieties regarding our place within an increasingly precarious world. The constraint of exactly 200 words per piece was inspired by Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Steward’s ‘The Hundreds’ (2019), a format that evokes the nature of our discussions during our short stints of being together: bite-sized yet soaked with meaning.
This is my struggle to decolonize the future. Humans have been rewriting the past with the tip of the dominances’ pen in every moment of the present. What if, science and art is a pen that we can write about the future? The future we want to live in. We all know that science does have a significant power in the 21st century. Then how should we use this mightier pen? I love how Ionesco put his dilemma into words.
What was true yesterday, what used to be an intellectual discovery, has been superseded, but the social and psychological crystallization is such as to maintain firmly in place, in the form of a desiccated tradition, truths which are no more than petrified conformisms, or conveniences, or symptoms of blindness and deafness. We know that everything has a tendency to become comfortably complacent; the tendency is particularly apparent in the case of revolutions.
(A Writer’s and His Problem, Encounter – Eugène Ionesco)
How disaster science can be more human for all of us? To which level and to which point, can we share the information? How can decision-making be more considerate to individuals? This is our struggle to be more human.
Complacency and conformism insinuate going with the flow, accepting or even celebrating status-quo. It can be tricky to be aware of one’s own conformist tendencies, unless you’re consistently zooming in and out. Past-future, local-global. Does que-sera-sera whatever will be will be, in reality encourage conformist thinking? Or maybe it’s a way to make your peace with shit hitting the fan. Either way, it’s easier for power structures to perpetuate when we stop questioning and resisting through our diverse means of expression.
Means should be noted as one of the keywords here. In disaster science (a field relatively new to me but I’m here with flashy sustainable development glasses), the science itself is a means to enable resilience and response for people. The colonization of disaster science and development trajectories is this disconnection — of the means with the outcome i.e. people, and in the larger sense, of people with their environment. For example: Pamela mentioned that 900 mangroves in the Philippines will be cut for a project on building infrastructure for flood mitigation and climate change. The right vocabulary can mask the disconnection beautifully, and allow things to go gently with the flow, like water, before the flood arrives.
So much violence is hidden by the commonsense notion that colonialism has ended. So many futures are condemned by the belief that we have reached the end of history. That things could not possibly be different than they are. That things are getting better all the time, and how could you possibly say otherwise? It was exactly these sorts of views that Voltaire mocked ruthlessly through his portrayal of Dr. Pangloss in Candide. Ironically, this book was inspired in many ways by the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake, a pivotal event in the development of disaster science.
We do disaster research in the belief that our work can help people, save lives, and build resilient communities. In learning to do this work we’re trained to think that our intentions are benevolent, our project rationales are sound, and our interventions should be welcomed. This training makes it difficult to connect with, and learn from, our shared history, and the struggle that will be required to accomplish anything like a decolonial agenda. History shows us that science and technical expertise has always advanced the interests and worldviews of the powerful. What strange form of amnesia is required to make us believe any differently now?
Amnesia indeed! Who can say what has been forgotten when so much of this violence is never taught (i.e. remembered) to begin with? How many disaster scientists actually agree that science and technical expertise tends to advance the interests of the powerful?
I wonder at times what sort of pedagogical interventions would be needed for disaster scientists to engage with the history of their field, the history of science, or more generally the ‘now-story’ of the Global South’s deprivation. In some post-colonial nations we encounter our histories and narratives through monuments, texts, songs, museums, and syllabi. What could be a fitting monument to the damage done by ‘impartial disaster scientists’ in recent times? What is a ‘syllabus for humanity’ that a disaster scientist would engage with? Is decolonial disaster training possible?
I personally don’t think many practicing disaster scientists are likely to engage with this content unless it becomes unavoidable. Is a petition, a manifesto, or a monument likely to start this conversation? Maybe all of these are necessary, and then some. Maybe we need to build a monument — to catalogue, to count damage, to visualize and narrate the impacts — about the depredations of colonial disaster science.
As we discussed, colonialism is not merely the extraction of culture but also the brainwashing of the mind. It is the deliberate conditioning of one’s ideas and thoughts to fit the agenda of the powerful – the government officials who stand atop the hierarchy, policy makers who serve their self-interests and academic experts who possess the power to rewrite history. When we consider amnesia then, at what degree and from whose point of view do we refer? The powerful who chose amnesia, or the powerless who were subjected to it? And if this amnesia is so prevalent and deeply-ingrained, could simple petitions, manifestos and monuments subvert that?
Even in post-colonial countries, I question the validity of the narratives and histories that are communicated through our monuments and museums. History is after all, a subjective discipline written from the point of view of the author – and in many cases, controlled by the state. In the words of Nietzsche, “We wish to use history only insofar if it serves living.” Given the lucrativity of disaster science and the power that technical experts wield over alternate pedagogies, I wonder if there could ever be a means to truly decolonize disaster science without provoking anarchy.
History seems to be the area of study by which we can talk about imperialism and its damages in the past. However, we often relate history with the past and forget that history is being made day by day. It has been before mentioned that the research that is being made in disaster science is with the purpose of creating a better response for the vulnerable population. In those moments of research, history is being made and little by little new research methods and scopes can be reached. We don’t need to suddenly have the answer about the causes, consequences and blames for the imperialismo or amnesia. We need to be critical about our points of view (both individually and collectively) in order to create new research approaches that can get us away from the methods which lead to imperialism and the amnesia that surrounds it.
History is created by keeping with the status quo or by changing it. We often think that it is only built upon changes, but this is not true. We also often keep an eye on what the other might be doing wrong without analyzing our own selves. Criticizing our beliefs and points of view is imperative both to know if a status quo can be kept, transformed or eradicated. We need to acknowledge the amnesia, but it is also necessary for us to find new ways to work with it. Its consequences and damages might not be taken back, but in reality we need to find new ways of working with it in order to make the whole body able to function properly.
Brown skin gives away my roots in a land where the azure waters of Palawan crash upon jagged cliffs of limestone, just as the sagely pine trees atop the majestic peaks of the Cordillera stretch their branches towards the sky.
I was taught that home is a pearl of great beauty. This turn of phrase slides off my tongue so effortlessly when I am in a bus, somewhere in Panay, making my way through bumpy roads lined with fragrant mango trees and rice fields unable to decide between green and gold.
I have lost home just as I have lost pearls. I have searched in vain for the verdant greens and blues of my youth, only to come across a nasty Pantone 3547C, a woeful shade of brown that marks a wrathful river prepared to devour every boat, human, and shanty in its way. I lost the home I knew, forever, it seems, to a Category Five typhoon that wailed like the ghost of a woman reaching an unspeakable end.
Nature chooses portents well. Humans quarrel over the meaning of words but Nature wronged prefers language that is unequivocal. Every catastrophe is a fable relentlessly echoing a tired but dire lesson: to find our way home, we must re-learn how to read wisdom for survival as it is etched into this fragile world, by the trees, the rivers, the pearls.