Decolonize this Place

Listening requires time, which is often lacking. Listening also asks strongly to read between the lines. To truly listen means, that the trauma that has been inflicted is passed down from generation to generation. It needs to be replaced by healing, redefinition and empowerment.

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Mihir Sharma once said that we need to listen with a multiplicity of ears. Then, to truly listen means that we allow ourselves to look at different modes of thinking by formulating a strategy of openness to dialogues that is seeking to disconnect from an epistemic as well as political way of knowing that is centred around western knowledge.

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To truly listen means to listen with a multiplicity of ears that sees change in the power of people’s imagination in liberating and freeing themselves from mental slavery, and the overall colonial matrix of power (Mignolo & Walsh 2018: On Decoloniality) with its coloniality that lives on. To truly listen means to allow decolonial thought to takeoff as a necessary means to imagine societies that are freed from colonial and imperial logics. To truly listen means that it is a must to acknowledge different ways of knowing, thinking and being. Imagination creates places that are not there yet. It is the elixir of freedom. Imagination is what thrives human experience. Imagination is what changes physical spaces and surroundings as well as how people feel about it.