"This book is for those that are searching for theory, curriculum, and pedagogy through the

lens of self-determination. It is divided into three sections. The authors include engaging
THE ROUTLEDGE
questions at the end of the chapters that assist in providing self-reflection .... Incredible!"
-Christine Ballengee-Morris, The Ohio State University, USA COMPANION TO
"This remarkable book centers art and art education as a powerful force for postcolonialism
and decolonization. With a tremendous range of diverse international voices taking up an
DECOLONIZINGART,
exciting range of scholarship, the book is truly one of a kind. It is magnificently unique in its
embrace of decolonization as a focus for rethinking the structures and content of education
CRAFT,AND VISUAL
and as a rebellious text that questions the colonized norms of scholarship by offering an array
of artful, reflexive, and performative texts. An utterly powerful book that all art educators CULTUREEDUCATION
n1ust read!"
-Rita L. Irwin, The University of British Columbia, Canada

"Art as a concept is not currently built upon a foundation by which diverse humans demon-
strate their self-determined creative, aesthetic arid meaning-making capacity. Instead, sys-
tems of colonization continue to largely limit the engagement of our imaginations across
worldviews. This book is one embarkation for building the creative consciousness necessary
for diverse humans finally to breathe life into art and the world."
-Cristobal Martinez, Arizona State University, USA
Edited by
Manisha Sharma and Amanda Alexander

i~ ~~~:!;n~~~up
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Designed cover image: Prashast Kachru. Blow up #12. 2020. Paan Stain
Series. New Delhi, India.
First published 2023
by Routledge
CONTENTS
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Ro11tledxe is an imprint of tl,e Taylor & Francis Group, an infor,na business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Manisha Sharma and
Amanda Alexander; individual chapters, the contributors.
The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in an¼ form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photo,opying and
recording, or in any informanon storage or retrieval system, wit.hout
permission in writing from the publishers. List of Figures ix
Iimfemark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks List efContributors xiv
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe, About the Cover xviii
ISBN: 9781032040158 (hbk) Acknowledgements xix
ISBN: 9781032040998 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003190530 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003190530 Introduction 1
Typeset in Bembo Manisha Sharma and Amanda Alexander
by codeMantra

PARTI
Creative Shorts 13

A Is for Alphabet: Reimagining Language and Mastery as a Creative

Meandering 14
Marianna Pegno and Anh-Thuy Nguyen

2 Critical Reflections on Teaching as a Decolonial Practice 20

Maria Leake

3 Angrez chale gaye, Angrezi chodgaye: Post-coloniality of Language 28

Nupur Mano} Sachdeva

4 Mind the Sky (Or Forgetting and the Imposed Futurity of the
Present): A Poem 35
Shanita Bigelow

5 Assembling Desire 39
Leon Tan, Mriganka Madhukaillya and Cristina Bogdan

V

32
DECOLONIZATIONAND THE
DEGENERALIZATIONOF
TIME IN ART EDUCATION
HISTORIOGRAPHY
Juuso Tervo
I would like to begin this chapter with two passages by Edouard Glissant, featured in his
books Poeticsof Relatio11and Poetic Inte11tion,respectively:
For centuries "generalization," as operated by the West, brought different community
tempos into an eguivalency in which it attempted to give hierarchical order to the times
they flowered. Now that the panorama has been determined and eguidistances de-
scribed, is it not, perhaps, time to return to a no less necessa1·y "degeneralization"? Not
to a replenished outrageous excess of specificities but to a total (dreamed-of) freedom
of the connections among them, cleared out of the very chaos of their confrontations.
("Poetics of Relation" 62)
Was not what you would call History incomplete, not only in reach but yet in
"understanding"? Is there not in your weary disdain for the historical a sort of affront to
those who never had a history for you? The history you ignored-or didn't make-was
it not History? (the complex and mortal anhistorical). Might you not be more and more
affected by it, in your fallowness as much as in your harvest? In your thought as much as
in your will? Just as I was a.ffectedby the history I wasn't making, and could not ignore?
("Poetic Intention" 23)
The complex and important questions Glissant poses serve both as ;i point of departure and
return for the following inquiry into decolonial thought and art education historiography.
Rather than a 111erefiguration of cyclicity, this imbrication of beginnings and ends is meant
to suggest a sort of a method: one that, in Glissant's terms, attempts to rehearse a "Poetics of
Relation," which:
remains forever conjectural and presupposes no ideological stability. It is against the
comfortable assurances linked to the supposed excellence of language. A poetics that
is latent, open, multilingual in intention, directly in contact with everything possible.
Theoretician thought, focused on the basic and fundamental, and allying with what is
true, shies away from these uncertain paths. ("Poetics of Relation" 32)
280 DOI: !0.4324/9781003190530- 36
Decolonization and the Degeneralization of Time in Art Education Historiography
While beginning and ending with uncertain paths is certainly familiar to anyone involved
with historical research, the uncertainty that Glissant points to entails a radical critique of the
epistemic mastery over the past, the present, and the future that historians so often rehearse
in the name ofHistory. 1 In other words, even though historical sources are always open to
(re)interpretation, this openness is always guided by either an implicit or an explicit under-
standing of what history is and what is the past (as represented by historians) understood
to do in the present; something that, throughout this chapter, I call historical imagination.
As Glissant above argues, the "generalization" of "Western/modern" 2 time and history has
entailed a historical imagination that, first, uses "Western" categories and categorizations to
"make sense" of temporal and epistemic differences globally, and second, actively neglects
histories not "made" by the "West." For Glissant, Poetics of Relation is a call to put such
"generalizing" History in question, particularly its temporal imaginaries that tie the funda-
mental openness of historical interpretation to a "historical economy that is directed by the
bws of progress" (Certeau "Heterologies" 199-200).
If, as Javier Sanjines C. has put it, "to decolonize means to unveil the hidden complicity
between the rhetoric of modernity and the logic of coloniality" (55), my intention in this
chapter is to study in what ways GJissant's Poetics of Relation, and as I will discuss later, Glo-
ria E. Anzaldua's concept nepant/11might degeneralize historical imagination and thus steer
art education historiography to paths that differ from the generalizing axis of modernity/
coloniality. In other words, shaken by poetics that is "directly in contact with everything
possible" ("Poetics of Relation" 32), I am interested in what might their poetics do to the
/,istory.3
very craft of writing history that is always also a practice of 111akillg
My use of the term study is intentional and, most importantly, methodological.• In the
spirit of Igor Stravinsky's claim, "poetics is the study of work to be done" (4), l see that to
study Glissant's and Anzaldt'.1a'spoetics is to study a work of decolonization yet to be done in
my own practice as an art education historian. Expressing this differently, their writings al-
low me to engage with historical imagination(s) I do not yet fully know how to utilize in my
work, but nevertheless consider to be crucial when searching for epistemologics and ethics
of historiography aside from the generalizing, "Western/modem" frames of reference. As a
student (not master) of dccolonial thought and practice, I use this chapter as an opportunity
to formulate theoretical connections between decolonial thought, philosophy of history, and
art education historiography. I do this by closely attending to passages of text that, I believe,
help to approximate the very work of generalization and degeneralization in art education
historiography. While this methodological framing makes my study somewhat speculative
and derivative, I nevertheless see that making history otherwise requires that one can also
,
Throughout lhi~ chapter, l use the ter111sHistory and Historical (wi h capitol H) ,i111ilarlyas Glissant does in
the pas age nbove; th;it is, when referring to the kind of gencrJlizcd histork;il i1110i;i11;1tion
this text ain,s to
crili<::illy unpack.
2 l use quotation marks around the krms "West" ~,nd "Western/inodern" in order to point to the need to de-
generalize them as \\'ell; tl13l, in other words, the "West" and it, "modernity" are wide ond compkx concept,
that $hould be approached with n ~ertoin cauuon. In addition, by pairing the ''Wcsc·'· with "modernity," I'm
lmdcrlining that much fthe critique of historical lime ['111rehearsing in this text 1sa critique ofnmc in the
so-called mudcrnity as fi~ured in the "We t.."
3 Sec Ccrteau, The W, iti11gof History.
Here, I continue my earlier explorations of poetic historiography for art education as a practice of st11rl]'i11g-
contra learning from-the past. See Tervo "Studying in the Dark."
281
 Juuso Tervo
imagine it being so-even if this means following "uncertain paths" devoid of "comfortable
assurances" ("Poetics of Relation" 32).
Uy focusing specifically on the temporal aspects of historical imagination, my aim is to
complement critical writings that have questioned Eurocentric contents of art education his-
tories. 5 This is because historians do not only work with sources-they also work with tin1e_
While diversifying the content of history beyond Eurocentric, male-dominated narratives of
the past is crucial for rethinking historiographical practices in the field, I see that it is equally
important to question the very idea of history itself and its temporal narrativiz;itions. If pre-
viously unacknowledged people, sources, worldviews, or practices are simply integrated mto
a generalized science that "moves (or 'progresses') by changing what it makes of its 'other"'
(Certeau, "The Writing of History" 3), historians simply secure their traditional position as
masters of otherness who are able to recognize, define, and make sense of the difference be-
tween the past, the present, and the future. 6 In the words of Michel de Certeau, this makes
historiography "in effect pedagogical: I will teach you, readers, something you do not know,
and it is a law, written by reality itself" ("Heterologies," 32). I see that Glissant's and Anz-
0 Generalizing and Degeneralizing Historical Imagination
ald1ia's thought and p oetics open an approach to time that allows another kind of pedagogy
of history to emerge: one that, in Anzald{1a's words, may lead to unlearning "consensual
'reality"' (Anzald{1a 44) whose "laws" allegedly assign things, thoughts, and people to their
proper places in the continuity of Historical time.
While being a theoretical study, my intention is not to provide a generalizable, theoret-
ical frame for a decolonial historiography in art education. Since theorizing and practic-
ing decolonization means different things in different historical and geopolitical contexts,
a generalizing theory of decolonization would be an oxymoron, a colonial enterprise in
itself. However, following Glissant, confining decolonization to mere particular instances of
thought, practice, and experience may lead to "a replenished outrageous excess of specifici-
ties" ("Poetics of Relation" 62) that, paradoxically, constrain these specificities to a particular
place within a universalized frame of reference. Thus, as Jini Kim Watson and Gary Wilder
have noted:
we need to transcend the sterile debate between one-sided conceptions of universalism
and particularism. Rather than embrace one or the other as the privileged standpoint of
critique, the task is to displace the opposition itself as an imperial artifact that is empiri-
cally unfounded, analytically limited, and politically self-undermining. (14)
This means that just like there is no one, neatly packaged History (unless history is forced
into such), there is no one single decolonial critique of Historical time. As Ania Loomba
has argued, leaning onto the oft-repeated distinction between "Western"/linear and "non-
Western"/cyclical systems of time may sustain the idea of "non-Western" societies as tradi-
tional and religious (i.e., caught in the past), whereas the "West" is seen forward-looking
and rational (i.e., transgressing the past). While cyclicity does characterize some Indigenous
perceptions of time (e.g., Keskitalo 566), using the time of "Western" science as an imrlicit,
unnamed background for bringing "different community tempos into an equivalency"
5 For two informative collections, see 13olin and Kantawab Revitnlizi11,~ Hisro,y; and Daichendt et al. "C,irical
Re-Framing of Art Ed11cation Histories."
6 What I 1ncan by this is son1cthing akin to hovv art education historian Mary Ann Stankiewicz ch:nactL·rt~cd
her Roots of Art Erl11catio1t Practice: "I attempt to 1nakc familiar ideas about art education sccn1 fresh by examin-
ing them in the context of art teaching practice a century ago, At the satnc ti1ne, I ,vant to make the 5rr;inge
world of the past more fallliliar by indicating similarities between present and past" (xii).
282
Decolonization and the Degeneralization of Time in Art Education Historiography
(Glissant, "Poetics ofRelation" 62) eventually reproduces epistemic power relations between
universalized "West" and the particularized "Rest." Keeping this in mind, when searching
for ways to degeneralize the temporal landscape of historical imagination in art education
historiography, my aim is to challenge what Rauna Kuokkanen has called "Western" aca-
demia's "epistemic ignorance" (49) toward the plurality of times, places, and spaces through
which the relation between the past, the present, and the future is imagined and figured.
This chapter proceeds as follows: First, I discuss what is the "Western/modern" time
and History that a decolonial approach to historical research might seek to degeneralize.
Beginning with a short excursus into historical teleologies in European thought, I explore
the interconnections between knowledge, agency, and time. Then, I introduce Anzaldua's
concept of nepantla and see what kind of degeneralizing changes in historical imagination it
might engender in historical research. Lastly, I conclude with a brief discussion of the role of
art in the temporal degeneralization of art education historiography.
In order to better understand what degeneralization of historical imagination might mean,
it is worth taking a closer look at how generalization of History itself works. Since a com-
prehensive discussion of the "Western" imaginaries of History is beyond the scope of this
chapter, I will focus on one aspect that is particularly pertinent to Historical time: teleology.
Uniting time and history into a universalized process of purposeful change beyond pure
chance or pure determinedness, teleological imaginaries of history were "among the key
vehicles of the formulation of universalist understandings of humankind in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries as they offered unification in time to the species at large" (Tri.iper,
Chakrabarty and Subrahmanyam 12). Hence, understanding historical teleologies offers not
only tools to question the so-called master narratives of History but also the temporal ar-
rangements of historical imagination.
When diving into the European formulations of historical teleologies in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, it is difficult not to stumble upon G. W. F. Hegel's work. His
characterization of world history as a process of increasing self-awareness of the Spirit- "the
human as such" (Hegel 21)-has served as a greatly influential backdrop for "Western" His-
tory and its teleological imaginaries. For Hegel, it was freedom that served as the "final goal"
(i.e., telos):
toward which all the world's history has been working. It is this goal to which all the
sacrifices have been brought upon the broad altar of the earth in the long flow of time.
This is the one and only goal that accomplishes itself and fulfills itself-the only con-
stant in the change of events and conditions, and the truly effective thing in them all. It
is this goal that is God's will for the world. (22-23)
Seeing History as a process of gradual self-awareness of freedom, Hegel imagined a world
historical frame through which it was possible not only to apprehend historical changes
and compare different historical and local contexts but also to understand the role of the
Particular (an individual person, group or nation) in universal History. Thi , in turn, mad
. history into a totalized whole that humans, with their knowledge of it, could steer forward.
As Tri.iper, Chakrabarty and Subrahmanyam characterize Hegel's historical system: "history
Was teleological process toward freedom precisely to the extent that it understood itself; and
in the very effort to understand itself, it made itself into an intelligible object" (9-10). Hence,
283
 Juuso Tervo
"If humanity made progress in its understanding of history, it could be certain that history
as a whole progressed" (9).
Hegel's teleological vision of freedom and history came, of course, with a price. Turning
history into an "intelligible object" whose objectified intelligibility guaranteed its progress
meant that not only history but the entire world had to become intelligible for Christian
Protestant, White male North Western Europeans like Hegel whose intelligence allegedly
kept the progress of History on its right track. As Ton1oko Masuzawa put it, "the assumption
of Euro-Christian supremacy over all others ... played a decisive role in the emergent sense
of'the world' as a totality" (70), meaning that every comparative distinction made between,
for example, science and religion, or tradition and progress, in any part of the world was
based on an implicit or an explicit European "frame of reference" (Rifkin 16). It was only
through this frame that differences-whether historical, cultural, or both-were to be imag-
ined and made sense if humanity was to make any progress at all.
How does this short excursus to Hegel's thought help to understand better what is at stake
in the generalization of.History that Glissant critiqued? It is important to note that the rela-
tionship between knowledge, agency, and time that Hegel's historical teleology entailed does
not merely concern History, but is deeply connected to the premises of"Western" science. In
particular, it has to do with the division between the inquiring subject and the object under
inquiry. 7 As the subject ought to represent the object (never the other way around), their
constitutive difference becomes settled in the meaning that the subject imposes on the object.
Hence, what Masuzawa calls the Euro-Christian "sense of 'the world' as a totality" (70)
refers to a practice of representation that posited this "sense" as the generalized rationality
governing meaning-making process in research, whether historical or not. Such a "science"
of History has included techniques of periodization that turn local and global histories into
identifiable and distributable objects of time (epochs, paradigms, etc.), as well as of contex-
tualization, that allow historians to produce meaningful knowledge of past events, people,
and phenomena by situating them within an encyclopedic corpus of"Western" knowledge. 8
As an object of 1neaningful knowledge, the past settles into a chronological sequence
of time that historians, with their knowledge of History, ought to steer forward. Dipcsh
Chakrabarty has argued that such an approach "speaks of a very particular relation to the
past:" a "desire on the part of the subject of political modernity both to create the past as
amenable to objectification and to be at the same time free of this object called 'history"'
(244). In this scheme, time functions merely as an empty backdrop for events, people, and
phenomena to occur. Following Mark Rifkin, to see time as a passive canvas on which cer-
tain events and subjectivities appear-and, subsequently, others disappear into-neglects the
fact that the objectivity of time and its progression are themselves products of a particular
tradition of"sense-rnaking" that has been used (and still is) to justify practices of coloniality.
From this perspective, degeneralizing and, subsequently, decolonizing historical i1mg-
ination would require accepting what Kuokkanen has called "the gift" (23) of indigenous
epistemes that resist the epistemological generalization and naturalization of"Western" time
of History. While "Westerners" have seen other imaginaries of time and history as a proof
that "non-Western" societies live in the past, 9 "a history that decolonizes otherness" (Perez
6), may begin from a recognition that historical imagination cannot be fully exhausted in
7 See Smith, Dern/011izi11yivlet/1odologies,especially Chapters 1-3.
8 See Davis, Periodizotio11& So11ercig11tyfor a critical discussion of the politics of periodization and Westerll ino-
dcrnity; on epistemological 111echanismsofpo,ver in historiography, see Certeau, The ~Vriti11g of History.
9 See Fabian, Ti111c011dt/1eOtl,cr.
284
Decolonization and the Degeneralization of Time in Art Education Historiography
the differentializing and objectifying work of History incapable of"tolerat[ing] otherness or
[eav[ing] it outside its economy of inclusion" (Young 35).
What does this have to do with writing histories of art education today? As mentioned
earlier, in the past few decades, art educators have been increasingly interested in local and
minor articulations of the past and offered powerful critiques of generalizing (often national)
histories of the field.' 0 Writing so-called new histories from below to challenge histories
from above, these histories have offered crucial perspectives to previously unrecognized as-
pects of the past. Yet, as I have argued elsewhere, 11 there is still a strong tendency among art
education historians to write histories in a future tense. 12 While future-oriented thought is
certainly not specific to Europe or its modernities, 13 the idea that the past finds its meaning
from the future it is expected to unfold resonates with Chakrabarty's words above: namely,
that the desire of the subject of modernity is to objectify the past in order to free itself from it.
In pedagogical terms, this means that the progressing time of History can be seen to function
as an unarticulated, general frame of reference that directs what kind oflessons from the past
art educators should draw from and why.
Taking this into consideration, I wonder what would it mean for art education historians
to write about "a past that cannot be rationalized and that is useless for predicting the future"
(Sanjines 164)? For example, writing and reading about past "struggles, lives, and achieve-
ments of African American and women art educators" (Bolin & Kantawala) offer a pow-
erful and much-needed critique of Eurocentric imaginaries that have guided art education
historians in the United States to their sources; however, I see that these histories may also
radically challenge historical imagination that treats these struggles, lives, and achievements
mainly as "models for" and "insights into" thefuture (Bolin & Kantawala 17-23). If this is so,
how might a degeneralized, decolonial historical imagination work with time aside from its
seemingly inevitable progression?
Imagining History Otherwise
In order to seek at least speculative answers to these complex questions, I turn to Gloria E.
Anzaldua's concept nepantla that, I claim, offers one possible tool to imagine historical time
otherwise. As a "place where we can accept contradiction and paradox" (Anzaldi'.1a 56),
11epantlaresists its rationalization through one, the general frame of reference. Hence, this
"midway point between the conscious and the unconscious, the place where transformations
are enacted" (56), helps to direct our attention to the workings of ti1ne itself without a re-
course to a future that "makes sense" of the past or vice versa. Calling those who occupy this
liminal place "las nepantleras," Anzaldi'.1a argued:
I
Las nepantleras refuse to turn right onto the dominant culture's assimilation/acquiescence
highway. They refuse to turn left onto the nationalistic-isolationism path demanding
that we preserve our ethnic cultural integrity. Instead, las nepantleras construct alterna-
tive roads, creating new topographies and geographies of hybrid selves who transcend
IO In addition to those mentioned earlier, see Len tis Co/011izcdt/1ro11Rl1
Art; Stabler "A Sentimental Art Education.''
11 See Tervo, "Always the New" and "Studying in the Dark."
12 For example, art education historian Patricia Amburgy has called for "[m]eaningful stories about the past"
that "ralse questions 3bout current conditions, ch::illenging us to reconsider old assumptions and to work to-
ward new beliefa and practices" (158).
13 See, for example, Acuff, "Afrofoturism"; l'arikka, "Middle East and Other Futurisms."
285
 Juuso Tervo
binaries and de-polarize potential allies. Nepantleras are not constrained by one culture
or world but experience multiple realities. (82)
Through their resistance toward a generalized future ("assimilation/acquiescence") and a
particularized past ("nationalistic-isolationism"), the work of las 11epa11tlerasdegeneralizes
the time of history in the present. This means that history becomes less of a differentiating
process between the past and the future and more of a web of interrelated tempos and con-
nections that, together, make up the present. In short, the temporal topographies of 11epa11tla
must be figured in plural. Countering "Western" academia's fear of "interruption and am-
biguity, loss of control, erasure of various boundaries (e.g., disciplinary), and an excess of
relativity" (Kuokkanen 88), Anzald{ia's nepantla offers an approach to change and difference
that does not try to tame its own plurality. "Because change often happens in nepantla,"
Anzald{ia argued, "we must learn to swim in this liminal space" (87).
Resonating with Chakrabarty's critique of "Western" objectification of time and His-
tory, Anzald{ia's poetics •offers an example of historical imagination that begins within time
and thus challenges the dichotomized interplay between subjects and objects. Like stories
that begin or take place in medias ,-es, this calls for a careful attention toward history as it is
unfolding. Even though accompanied by a profound uncertainty about the course of events
(here, one can think of the first pages of a book or first minutes of a film during which one
enters into the story, figuring out its world and characters), such an approach also entails an
attentive openness toward the present as a time and place affected by multiple, yet connected
pasts. Rather than "making sense" of this present by inserting it into a narrative of gradual
progression or, alternatively, of decline-a narrative fueled by self-conscious actions that
either perpetuate or hinder it-to begin within the temporal plurality of the present offers
a possibility to study pasts and presents si11mlta11eously and thus multiply temporal frames of
reference through which history is written. In Rifkin's words, this means to be attentive to
"peoples' own frames of reference for their experience of time: not just as beliefs set within
a supervening or underlying 'natural' time but as a basis for understanding the materiality of
their ways of being and becoming" (Rifkin 31).
To concretize this a bit, Indigenous scholarship reminds us that colonialism is not simply
a past phenomenon of "Western" imperialism, but a very actual, present condition around
the globe. 1' What this means for historical research is that instead of approaching colonial-
ism as a past mistake that Historical progression eventually gets rid of, it is understood to
actively partake in the historical imagination that "makes sense" of the present, including
present imaginations of future progression. This does not mean that colonialism would be an
ultimate frame of reference through which Indigeneity or non-Indigeneity, "West" or "non-
West," or, even more abstractedly, particular and universal History become intelligible. As
Anzald{1a's nepa11tlaexemplifies, there are also other topographies of historical imagination
than a single crossroad: a body of water or a deep soil that spreads into multiple directions
both vertically and horizontally. From this perspective, to be attentive to past and present
practices of coloniality in, for example, Indigenous education 15 would not only be a practice
of unearthing minor histories neglected by "Western/modern" History but also be a practice
of (re)inserting the latter into the soil of connected pasts and presents for it to decompose
and disintegrate. Eventually, such a "Western/modern" imagination might begin to lose its
14 See Smith, Dcco/011izi11g
1Wcthodologics.
15 See Eldridge "An Indigenom Reframing"; Kcskitalo "Place and Space in Sami Education"; and Kortcb
ct al. Sn111i
Ed11rntio11al
History i11a Co111paiatiuc
Iutcmatio11alPerspective.
286
Decolonization and the Degeneralization of Time in Art Education Historiography
explanatory force and authority as the frame of reference through which to "make sense" of
change, difference, and otherness, whether in the past or in the present.
Here, decomposing and disintegrating offer useful metaphors for a durative work of tim.e
that requires a language of history devoid of a single center from which differences are
perceived and mastered. In contrast to the universalized freedom that offered Hegel's nar-
rative of gradual self-awareness its future horizon, such a language might attune to "a total
(dreamed-of) freedom of the connections among" "specificities" ("Poetics of Relation," 62,
emphasis added), and thus degeneralize historical agency and imagination. Like Glissant's
Poetics of Relation, the fluctuating and withering boundaries between subjects and objects
in 11epa11/lamean that a decolonial, degeneralizing historiography would step away from
"Western/modern" figurations of the relation between knowledge, agency, and time. This
resonates, in part, with David Scott's call for a "sensibility for the tragic" in postcolonial
thought:
A tragic perspective aims to offer, among other things, a strong doubt about teleologies
of history in which heroic subjects ofrational self-determination and committed resolve
realize their moral and political destinies, and it does so in part by urging an attunement
to the contingencies that can afflict human action in time and therefore a sensitivity to
the constraints of human finitude, the pervasive, ineliminable proximity of collision and
failure, of catastrophe and death. (800)
Taking up a tragic perspective does not mean that a decolonial poetics of historiography
would adhere to the narrative of extinction so often imposed on Indigenous and Oth-
ered communities by the "West"-a narrative that sees extinction as a "proof" that such
communities cannot reach the kind of historical agency that marks the "superiority" of
"Western/modern" History. Rather, the contingencies that Scott refers to offer a reminder
that time's objectification into a universalized background for Historical development often
neglects a wide range of agencies, whether human or nonhuman, whose actions cannot
be neatly narrated between the beginning and the end. 16 Instead of approaching the limits
of one's conscious control over History as a problem to be solved (e.g., a tragedy we must
overcome), I see that these limits bring about an ethics of historical "sense-making" based
on openness, attention, and care toward changes and differences that might make little or no
sense from the perspective of Historical progression.
It is worth noting that not adhering to "Western/modern," scientific practices of "sense-
making" may put decolonial historiography in a precarious, uncertain position within
academia. The epistemic ignorance that Kuokkanen sees as a central characteristic of the
"Western" university system effectively margi~alizes everything that does not "make sense"
through its dominant frames of reference. As Emma Perez puts it:
The decolonial imaginary is intangible to many because it acts much like a shadow
in the dark. It survives as a faint outline gliding against a wall or an object. The shadow
is the figure between the subject and the object on which it is cast, moving and breath-
ing through an in-between space. (6)
16 To return to the 1nctaphor of decomposition, ,vhile it is possible to give the process of dcc01nposition a point
ofbeglnning and an end-let's say, an apple turns to ln111111s-the process itself is connected to so many other
11g.is processes, agencies, and conditio11s that "111aklng sense" ofit only through a recourse to, let's say, apple's in-
herent potentiality to tur11 into soil, 1nakes little sense fron1 the perspective of the process as a whole.
287
 Juuso Tervo
Returning to Glissant's questions that open this chapter, this intangibility does not need to
be accepted as such: it must be questioned, endlessly, since the life-worlds that a decolonial
imaginary speaks of are very much tangible for many who are left out from the Historical
imagination of "Western" "modernity." Being attentive to these life-worlds does not have
to be done in the name of History or its progression. Rather, it may be understood as an act
of care toward the plurality of temporal and epistemic frames of reference through which
history is imagined, researched, and written-in a word: rnade.
Closing Thoughts
In this chapter, my intention has been to use aspects of Glissant's and Anzaldua's thought and
poetics to imagine historical temporalities aside from the generalizing logic of modernity/
coloniality. I have focused my study specifically on historical time because temporal frames
of reference through which historians "make sense" of history play an important role both
in the generalization and degeneralization of historical imagination. "Exploring what con-
stitutes the background for marking and experiencing time," writes Rifkin, "draws atten-
tion not only to the milieu, at whatever scale, that serves as the context for thinking and
feeling time's unfolding but also to the taken-for-granted processes through which temporal
dynamics are figured" (11). I see that this challenges historians to pay attention to various
temporal dynamics at play in their work and encourages them to seek historical imaginaries
and figurations of knowledge, agency, and time aside from the eternally progressing History
of modernity/coloniality.
What is the decolonial work to be done that Glissant's and Anzald{1a's poetics might lay out
for art education historians? Instead of seeking epistemic validity, ethical frameworks, ped-
agogical mastery, or historical imaginaries solely from the traditions of "Western/modern"
science, I see that art education historians who, like myself, are trying to understand what
decolonization means for their work could benefit from studying artistic practice of artists
and authors such as Glissant and Anzald{1a. After all, artists, much like historians, work with
time; sometimes in ways that question its chronologically narrated order. It is, of course,
important to acknowledge that "art" (just like history) is neither neutral nor univers;tlly
applicable concept.17 For example, as Gunvor Guttorm has argued, while Sarni duodji may
be characterized as traditional arts and craft, the very concept of "traditional" derives from a
European tradition of thought that not only separates art (high culture) from craft (/011 1 cul-
ture) but also sustains the idea that tradition is always separate from innovation. This means
that practices like duodji are easily considered separate from contemporary art-a term that,
in itself, often homogenizes the very contemporaneity it refers to-and, subsequently, from
contemporary art curricula. Sin1ilarly, when discussing the difficulty of using the term art to
describe her practice, duojar Jenni Laiti writes:
When I make duodji, l make more than an object or a piece-I create new life. In co-
operation with the material, I discuss, communicate and create with love and from love.
Each duodji has its own will, its own life. Respect, consent, trust, openness, honesty aucl
mutual understanding arc part of the process. My fiimily, grandparents and pcopl' be-
fore them, future generations and the place, region and land I belong to are all inv lved
in the creation process. ("Art is free when we are free" paragraph 10)
17 For an informative discussion of the epistemic generalization of European art, see Ryyn,inen
~{CC>ltmlH11ropca11Art.
288
Decolonization and the Degeneralization of Time in Art Education Historiography
Instead of approaching epistemic mismatches like these as obstacles that more accurate
methods and methodologies will eventually overcome, I see that it is precisely from such
mismatches where degeneralization of historical imagination in art education, whether em-
ployed in historical research or educational practice, may begin. Notably, some have already
begun. For example, Laurie Eldridge has shown how the overlaps between artistic and cer-
emonial practices among Native Americans involve layers of knowledge and practices that
cannot be "made sense" through settler imaginaries of science, history, or art. Arguing for an
"Indigenous reframing" (27) of historical research in art education, Eldridge's work demon-
strates the importance of rethinking the very work of history, including its temporal frames
of reference through which personal, interpersonal, and communal pasts, presents, and fu-
tures are imagined and figured. Similarly, writing and reading about the above-mentioned
~truggle , lives, and achi vements of African American and women art educacors not only
o~cr imporcanc models for the future bur al o help to radically reconfigure future-oriented
imagin, rie £History that have foiled to recognize knowledges and agencies beyond Euro-
centric frames of reference.
To begin i11 rnediasres means that the horizon of degeneralization-the work to be done-
is not in the future, but now, in the present. Laiti's words above and Anzaldua's nepantla offer
figurations of a historical present whose time and space cannot be confined within a gener-
alized meaning-making process between (active) subjects and (passive) objects. Extending its
110111 both into the past and the future, such a present requires a pedagogy quite different from
what Certeau identified as the explanatory pedagogy of History. Perhaps a pedagogy of de-
generalization, a decolonial historiography may approach the work of history in the present
akin to what Anzaldua described as swimming in nepanlla, that is, living and breathing in
time's differing tempos. What might this concretely do for the craft of art education histo-
riography is still, at least for me, unclear. However, even as a conjectural point of beginning,
I see that a degeneralization of time unfolds a poetics of history that resist the "comfortable
assurances" ("Poetics of Relation" 32) of pedagogical mastery and the certainty it demands.
Prompts and Resources
How do you imagine the relationship between the pa c, the pre enc, and the future in
your work a a tudent, educator, artist, activi t, and/or r e::ircher?What r.ole docs de-
colonization (::i you understand it) play i_nthat imagination?
From where might you begin to search for the kind of "un ertain paths" (Glis ant) t
history ::isdi cus ed in this ch::ipter?To whcr~ might such paths lead you?
AIDA: Arctic lndigenou D 'sign Archives: hctps://kansallisarkisto.fi/aida/
Femini t ulture Hou e: http ://feministculturehou e.org/abouc/
# topHatredNow platform: https://www.scophatrednow.fi/about
Acknowledgment
I wish to thank Johanna Sitomaniemi-San and two anonymous reviewers for offering care-
ful, critical, and insightful feedback for the first version of this chapter.
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