Reclaiming Relationality through the Logic of the Gift and Vulnerability

• Published in: Hypatia
• Main Authors: Gagnon-Bouchard, Laurie, Ranger, Camille
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2020
• Subjects: Sámi
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2019.20; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0887536719000205

Abstract This article addresses the conditions that are necessary for non-Indigenous people to learn from Indigenous people, more specifically from women and feminists. As non-Indigenous scholars, we first explore the challenges of epistemic dialogue through the example of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). From there, through the concept of mastery, we examine the social and ontological conditions under which settler subjectivities develop. As demonstrated by Julietta Singh and Val Plumwood, the logic of mastery—which has legitimated the oppression and exploitation of Indigenous peoples—has been reproduced in academia, leaving almost no room for Indigenous knowledge and epistemes. In the same vein, Sámi scholar Rauna Kuokkanen reclaims and suggests the logic of the gift as a means to render academia more hospitable to Indigenous peoples and epistemes. In our view, reclaim(ing) as a concept-practice is a promising way to disrupt colonial, racist, and sexist power relations. Thus, we in turn propose to reclaim vulnerability as defined by Judith Butler in order to deconstruct masterful settler subjectivities and reconstruct relational ones instead. As theorized by Erinn Gilson, we propose epistemic vulnerability to imagine the conditions of our learning from Indigenous peoples and philosophies.