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EPISTEMIC JUSTICE, MINDFULNESS,
AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL
HUMANITIES

Epistemic Justice, Mindfulness, and the Environmental Humanities explores how

contemplative pedagogies and mindfulness can be used in the classroom to address
epistemic and environmental injustice.
In recent years, there has been a groundswell of interest in contemplative
pedagogies in higher education, with increasing attention from the environmental
sciences, environmental humanities, and sustainability studies. Teachers and writers
have demonstrated how mindfulness practices can be a key to anti-oppression and
anti-racist eforts, both in and out of the classroom. Not all forms of contemplative
pedagogy are suited for this anti-colonial and anti-oppressive resistance, however.
Simply adopting mindfulness practices in the classroom is not enough to dislodge
and dismantle white supremacy in higher education. Epistemic Justice, Mindfulness,
and the Environmental Humanities advocates for mindfulness practices that afrm
multiple epistemologies and cultural traditions. Written for educators in the
environmental humanities and other related disciplines, the chapters interrogate
the western uptake of mindfulness practices and suggest anti-colonial and anti-
oppressive methods for bringing mindfulness into the classroom. The chapters
also discuss what mindfulness practices have to ofer to the pursuit of a culturally
relevant pedagogy.
This highly applied and practical text will be an insightful read for educators in
the environmental humanities and across the liberal arts disciplines.

Janelle Adsit is Associate Professor of English at Humboldt State University, USA.

EPISTEMIC JUSTICE,
MINDFULNESS, AND
THE ENVIRONMENTAL
HUMANITIES
Refections on Teaching

Janelle Adsit
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Janelle Adsit
The right of Janelle Adsit to be identifed as author of this work has been
asserted by her 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 any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
A part of chapter 4 “Reading and writing practices in the classroom”
was previously published in Janelle Adsit and Renée Byrd, Writing
Intersectional Identities (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Adsit, Janelle, author.
Title: Epistemic justice, mindfulness, and the environmental humanities :
refections on teaching / Janelle Adsit.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifers: LCCN 2021025094 (print) | LCCN 2021025095 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367479633 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367479626 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003037439 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Human ecology and the humanities. | Environmental
justice. | Mindfulness (Psychology) | Culturally relevant pedagogy.
Classifcation: LCC GF22 .A47 2022 (print) | LCC GF22 (ebook) |
DDC 304.2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021025094
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021025095
ISBN: 978-0-367-47963-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-47962-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-03743-9 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003037439
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vi

Introduction 1

1 Pluriversality and multiepistemic humility 26

2 What is epistemic justice? 56

3 Staying with the practice: the resources of mindfulness 85

4 Reading and writing practices in the classroom 120

5 Gathering together 143

Coda: no fnal word 169

Index 171
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Each page of this book is written in deep acknowledgment of the privilege of

having time, resources, and space to write and, most consequentially for me, in
being able to listen and receive. This book emerged through many conversations,
webinars, seminars, and because of the time I had to read and learn from scholars
through their pages. These words were written in a period of time when over four
million people lost their lives to COVID-19 and millions more put themselves at
risk by serving their communities day after day. A disproportionate number of these
are Black and Indigenous peoples and people of color. I write every page of this
book in acknowledgment of their lives.
I want to thank those who have shown up on Zoom calls and in socially dis-
tanced outdoor spaces to talk with me. Thank you to these voices I trust to help
me see beyond some of the knowledges I’ve received.
Thanks to John Johnson who has shaped my thinking. Thank you for caring
that this book would come into existence and for the years we shared.
My never-ending appreciation also goes to Sue Doe for her mentorship and col-
laboration over many years. Abiding gratitude to Conchitina Cruz for friendship,
for modeling what it means to do meaningful work.
Deep gratitude to Shawn Hargan also: for words that keep me going—thank
you for always being family to me.
Thanks to Greta Gaard and Bengu Erguner-Tekinalp for sharing resources and
expertise and ofering bright news and meaningful collaboration in a difcult time.
Thank you to Reverend Deborah Johnson for your teaching and your vision.
Resounding thanks to the students who have allowed me to accompany them
in journeys of thought that I have learned much from: Natalie Acuña, Megan
Awwad, Evie Ferreira, Kelly Fortner, Lucy Gutierrez, Alysia Hegg, Meriel Melen-
drez Mees, Dakota Rohlin, Em Scott, Lex Siebuhr, Vanessa Tenorio, and Madi
Whaley. My humble gratitude goes also to Cristian Martinez, Erika Andrews,
 Acknowledgments vii

Theressa Lopez, Marcos Hernandez, Hallie Lepphaille, and Corrina Wells for
allowing me to be your colleague and collaborator. My sincere thanks to other
colleagues at Humboldt State, especially Renée Byrd and Sarah Jaquette Ray for
their companionship and care and for the inspiration they share with me. Thanks
also to Christina Hsu Accomando, Sarah Ben-Zvi, Deepti Chatti, Andrea Delgado,
Laura Hahn, Heal McKnight, Carly Marino, Edelmira Reynoso, Erin Sullivan,
Janet Winston, Andrea Juarez, Kirby Moss, and Patty Yancey. Big-hearted thanks to
Lisa Tremain for partnership and to Mary Ann Creadon for her vote of confdence.
Much appreciation to Teri Bronder-Lewis for her strength and wisdom.
This book is informed by instruction and resources shared by Cutcha Risling
Baldy, Kaitlin Reed, and Kayla Begay; thank you for all you’ve taught me in each
space we’ve shared. This book was written before the start of the Spring 2021 book
group co-facilitated by Professors Risling Baldy and Reed, but I want to acknowl-
edge the learning I know I will do there. I also wish to thank additional faculty
from the Environmental Studies and Environment & Community programs who
have informed my thinking. Thanks also to the Critical Race, Gender, and Sexual-
ity Studies faculty for allowing me to join you and learn from you.
Thank you to the HSU library, especially Brianne Hagen who made herself
available to track down many sources for this book. Thank you for your meta-level
wondrousness, Bri.
Kumi Watanabe-Schock and Jay Schock have my endless admiration and grati-
tude; I can’t thank you both enough. You make things happen and you make things
possible. Thank you for your sustaining friendship.
Thank you to Grace Harrison, Rosie Anderson, and Rebecca Brennan at
Routledge for their support, patience, and guidance as we completed this book in
a tumultuous year.
To my parents, Eric and Lisa Adsit, who are behind everything I’ve ever done.
Thank you for all the ways that you daily encourage me forward. You set me in
motion and keep me going. Thank you.
 Acknowledgments ix

I wrote this book on the present and ancestral homeland and unceded territory of
the Wiyot Tribe, near to the Hupa, Karuk, Mattole, Tolowa, Wailaki, and Yurok
Tribal communities. Specifcally, this book was written in Jaroujiji, which, in my
limited understanding, roughly translates as “where you sit and rest.” The Red-
wood trees, the Bay, and the roll of the ocean make this a meditative place. I make
this acknowledgment in recognition of the remarkable fortune it is to be able to sit
and rest in this world—what should be an entitlement of all is denied to so many.
Reverend angel Kyodo williams1 calls us to account for “Our inability . . . to
honor the theft of these lands and the building of wealth, power, and privilege on
the countless backs and graves of Black people.” I make this acknowledgement in
accountability to this reality with the intention to do all I can to redress what has
been done and halt these systems of oppression. May my words match my actions.

Janelle Adsit
January 2021

Note
1 williams, angel Kyodo, Lama Rod Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah, Radical Dharma: Talking
Race, Love, and Liberation (North Atlantic, 2016).
INTRODUCTION

“Teachers, We Cannot Go Back to the Way Things Were.”1 This headline from
Bettina Love’s April 2020 EdWeek article has stayed with me from the day it was
published, as I have tried to imagine my part in higher education in this pandemic-
changed and climate-changed world. The way things were—and are—can be
described with words like marginalization, disposability, massive student debt, mass
incarceration, police brutality, border patrol, toxins distributed by racist paradigms,
and precarity that is unevenly experienced. These words are tools for naming the
daily experience of living in oppression and having to fght to matter in this world.
Things never should have been the way they were, Bettina Love notes, and we
cannot continue.
Bettina Love’s work is abolitionist. She calls us to understand the interlocking
systems that make state violence possible and that perpetuate state violence in our
schools. The struggle against these forces—and the racism, sexism, homophobia,
transphobia, Islamophobia, ableism, and classism that pervades—must be at the
forefront of our work as teachers, as researchers, and as activists. The call comes
clearly: we need to transform. The transformation is long overdue.
Education should have never been this way, serving some to the exclusion of
many more, keeping systems of privilege in place. And what is said of education
broadly here also pertains to our felds of study in the environmental humanities.
The construction of the humanities within western(ized) systems of higher educa-
tion was built upon and made to reinforce the hierarchies that center and afrm the
lives of some while making “others” disposable.
What does it mean to facilitate a classroom space—whether that space is virtual
or within four walls—in this time, an era that is characterized by the long and con-
tinued legacy of colonial and racist thinking that shapes the conditions of the living
beings of this planet? What does it mean to facilitate spaces populated by people
who are variously beneftting from or brutalized by this system? We call these
DOI: 10.4324/9781003037439-1
2 Introduction

spaces environments of learning, but they are often experienced as sites of trauma,
exclusion, and subjugation.
This book is about the educational system that the environmental humanities
is part of. The environmental humanities is a teaching discipline as much as it is
a research discipline, and our commitments to environmental justice should span
across the realms of our work. And of course, these realms are not separate. As
Natalie Loveless argues, “To state the obvious, how one does one’s pedagogy in a
feld impacts what can and is done in that feld.”2
We may be in a moment where the regimes of modern knowledge are breaking
open; they are inadequate to the moment and insufcient to address the exigencies
of our time. This book dwells in the potential of this fundamental break.

The educational machine

Bettina Love joins with bell hooks in envisioning education as a practice of free-
dom. Love’s work is about radical collective freedom-building that counters perva-
sive injustice, and the role our education systems and our knowledge practices have
in this pursuit. There is potential for educational spaces to work in solidarity with
communities of color intersecting with queer communities, disability communi-
ties, and all who are working toward justice. Love calls us toward an abolitionist
education characterized by the centrality of the “imagination, creativity, refusal,
(re)membering, visionary thinking, healing, rebellious spirit, boldness, determi-
nation, and subversiveness of abolitionists to eradicate injustice in and outside of
schools.”3 This vision should guide us in the environmental humanities, as our
work must be vigorously pushing toward justice.
Yet our situatedness within educational institutions makes our justice work
fraught. We are embedded in an institutional context that continues to render
its colonialist thinking and colonialist enforcement. These institutions have been
meant to instill the idea, in Love’s words, that people of color “have had no impact
on history or the progress of mankind,” which is a foundational idea of white
supremacy.4 This idea plays out both in content and form in educational systems—
both in what is taught and how it is taught. This is a point bell hooks makes across
her oeuvre: She writes of how “imperialist capitalist white-supremacist patriarchal
politics has shaped learning communities, afecting both the way knowledge has
been presented to students and the nature of that information.” This is a manifesta-
tion of what hooks calls dominator culture: the perpetuation of colonial regimes
that insist upon imperialist capitalist white supremacist cisheteropatriarchy.5
From Patrick Wolfe, we know that colonialism is a continued, perpetuated
structure and not a single event.6 Racism is concurrent with colonialism, or in
Wolfe’s words, “race is colonialism speaking.” The education system has been from
the start a part of the colonialist structure and its reproduction. Nominally, our ide-
als are to educate and to transform, but conventional educational practices work to
subordinate and control. As Foucault made clear, disciplines discipline and academe
is embroiled in many larger systems of control and stratifcation through debt,
 Introduction 3

policy, and evaluation shrouded under the pernicious myth of a meritocracy and
the assumption of “a model of ‘uplift.” Daniel Heath Justice describes this model as
the idea that those who are not benefciaries of the systems we live within “must
be lifted up to the social status of the privileged but ostensibly sympathetic activist-
observer.” He continues,

In such a model, there’s no reflection on whether or not the observer’s status

quo standards hold any appeal for anyone else and no thought that these
standards and values might be considered dangerous or even corrosive to
those being “helped.”

Carrying this legacy of patronizing arrogance and violence, the classroom remains a
place without integrity, as bell hooks has explained. By integrity, hooks means the
“integration of ideals, conviction, standards, beliefs—and behavior . . . when ideals
and practice match,” a defnition she borrows from Nathaniel Branden.7
The colonial legacies embedded in the university are everywhere apparent. My
campus’ mission-style architecture is only one manifestation; we can see these lega-
cies in the structure of the institution itself: with its enforced “divisions” of knowl-
edge. The academy is a manifestation of an epistemology that sees value in division
and hierarchy,8 antagonistic to epistemologies that center interconnectedness. This
epistemology structures systems of recognition in the university: why Aztec dance is
more rarely recognized as a knowledge practice than computer science. Under aca-
deme’s dominant epistemology, it is a supposed given that nanotechnology should
be better resourced and prioritized than the study and practice of basketmaking;
this is in willful ignorance of, and derision toward, the rich and varied Indigenous
traditions of weaving and the encoding of history and the transfer of knowledge
in collective practices of craft that are tied to the land. Academe is inscribed in the
colonial manufacture of logics that shape the demand to produce (e.g., research,
dollars, or any other unit of productivity) within the academy.
Care for our planet requires that these colonial-capitalist logics be dismantled.
We may acknowledge this fact and may even teach about the limits of these log-
ics in our classes, but are we, as a feld, striving to dismantle the structures these
logics have produced? This question is about dismantling racism and countering
white supremacy on and of our campuses. Racism is insidious. The performative
valuing of diversity, multiculturalism, and antiracism within university contexts9 is
no cover for the relentless reproduction of racist structures and inequities through
many means, including epistemic discrimination. As Rauna Kuokkanen notes, “In
the contemporary university, it is no longer non-Western people, but rather their
systems of knowledge and their perceptions of the world, that are labelled infe-
rior.”10 It remains sanctioned to speak of the inferiority of cultural knowledges
and practices, when other forms of explicit discrimination may be less sanctioned,
although nonetheless persistent in practice. Discrimination via the hierarchizing of
epistemologies accompanies the racism that is carried out at a structural and inter-
personal level. White supremacy continues to be reinforced in subtle and unsubtle
4 Introduction

ways: in who gets hired, who gets assigned which forms of work, whose work gets
elevated by awards committees, which knowledges count as legitimate.
In the environmental humanities, every class we teach is about interlocking
oppressions and the efects of intellectual domination, even if we fail to address
matters in these terms. As Kyle Powys Whyte notes, following Daniel R. Wildcat,

climate injustice is a recent episode of a cyclical history of colonialism inflict-

ing anthropogenic (human-caused) environmental change on Indigenous
peoples. . . . Climate injustice, for Indigenous peoples, is less about the spec-
tre of a new future and more like the experience of déjà vu.

Climate injustices “began well before the last 250 years of industrial development.”11
A disciplinary understanding of the environment may enforce hierarchy, as Sarah
Jaquette Ray makes clear in The Ecological Other. Ray identifes how white envi-
ronmentalism’s framing of “purity and pollution” serves to fortify white supremacy
and ableism; environmentalism enforces a social order by making certain bodies
virtuous and other bodies expendable.12
A parallel to what Ray describes occurs in terms of epistemology: a white tradi-
tion is centered as virtuous and relevant to the environmentalist project (e.g., the
Thoreau, Leopold, Carson canon) while other cosmologies and epistemologies
exist for the environmentalist project only as passive resources to be extracted and
assimilated into an existing intellectual repertoire.
White environmentalism’s insistence on the separation of nature from culture,
environmental concerns from human concerns, continues. As Robert Bullard,
Claire Jean Kim, Curtis Marez, Rob Nixon, David Naguib Pellow, Laura Pulido,
Julie Sze, and many others have identifed, environmental justice concerns are in
every environmental concern; yet, the organization of knowledge in the academy
does not make this truth central. Instead, biology, botany, and forestry are taught
not within frameworks of social justice, and it is often only through the tireless
eforts of an Indigenous studies department that Indigenous ecological knowledges
may be honored in these courses. Summarizing this reality in western systems of
knowledge production, Linda Tuhiwai Smith identifes a colonial orientation that

assumes Western ideas about the most fundamental things are the only ideas
possible to hold, certainly the only rational ideas, and the only ideas which
can make sense of the world, of reality, of social life and of human beings. . . .
Some indigenous and minority group researchers would call this approach
simply racist. It is research which is imbued with an ‘attitude’ and a ‘spirit’
which assumes a certain ownership of the entire world, and which has estab-
lished systems and forms of governance which embed that attitude in insti-
tutional practices.13

By declaring that “Western ideas about the most fundamental things are the only
ideas possible to hold,” other worldviews are discredited, marginalized, or eviscer-
ated in a colonial academic milieu. This is epistemic injustice.
 Introduction 5

The potential of education

Education has served as a central tool in enforcing assimilation. Built to reinforce
the hierarchies of power, Aihwa Ong notes that education is “a social technology—
in the Weberian sense of appropriate means to an end—for constituting subjects in
particular spaces of calculation.”14 There is no turning from this. To be imbricated
in educational spaces is to be part of this matrix of power. How we work within
educational spaces to shift these relays should be our central concern, and this ori-
entation afects all aspects of our work.
As educational arenas are part of existing apparatuses of power, they also have
the potential to transform them. This book ofers a critique of educational spaces,
but my critique comes from an investment in the potential of these spaces. As la
paperson writes in the opening of A Third University Is Possible, “Within the colo-
nizing university also exists a decolonizing education.” They continue,

Regardless of its colonial structure, because school is an assemblage of

machines and not a monolithic institution, its machinery is always being sub-
verted toward decolonizing purposes. The bits of machinery that make up
a decolonizing university are driven by decolonial desires, with decoloniz-
ing dreamers who are subversively part of the machinery and part machine
themselves.15

In fullest acknowledgment of the continued prevalence of racism of white-

supremacist and colonialist thought and action in higher education, this trust in the
dream and possibility of decolonizing education is persuasive. It is in bell hooks’
vision for “academic settings [which] are one of the few locations in our nation
where individuals cross the boundaries of race to learn from one another and join
in fellowship together.”16 Education spaces are more than one thing because they
represent people coming together and as such can be a site of community power.
There is radical potential in gathering with intention, and institutions of education
provide these opportunities for gathering. However, every time we fall back on the
canonized and entrenched, rather than prioritizing what is emergent, we are miss-
ing this potential. We need to prioritize what can come into being with the full
engagement of those who come to educational spaces.
Aligning with a liberatory vision for education requires a persistent and deep
skepticism of educational conventions. In the environmental humanities, we should
follow those who are working to intervene in the moment’s most dire realities, and
we should know that this work is fundamentally stymied by colonialist educa-
tional conventions. The educational practices we’ve inherited prioritize obedience
over world-building, conformity over the emergent, and disciplining practices over
freedom and autonomy. Not only does obedience reinforce supremacist power
dynamics but it is also oriented toward what is, rather than what can be. We need
educational environments that foster the creativity and freedom for transformation.
Unsettling educational practices becomes an imperative. This book is a thought
6 Introduction

exercise in this arena, in humble concert with many educators who are exercising
their thinking.
We seek imaginations that resist oppressive regimes and build adaptive, respon-
sive multispecies futures. bell hooks notes the necessity of this response: “We are
bombarded daily by a colonizing mentality,” she writes, “so we must be constantly
engaging new ways of thinking and being.”17 The environmental humanities, if
the feld makes good on its potential, can be oriented toward the dismantling of
racial capitalism and the extractivist orientation that undergirds it, exposing the
lie of what Enrique Dussel has named the “developmentalist fallacy.”18 Ecological
devastation and environmental injustice will not be remedied within the systems
that continually perpetuate these harms.
The Quechua word pachakuti is often translated as “world reversal.” The
word is associated with the powerful mobilization of Indigenous people of the
Andes and the anticipated far-reaching upheaval that is necessary to overturn
colonial orders.19 As Mario Blaser explains, the word combines the Quechua
word “pacha” (world, time, and space, or state of being) and “kati” (meaning
change, turn, or something that comes back to itself).20 While I have no entitle-
ment to this word, it guides me in my intention to be in support of something
that is far beyond me. It guides me to defer to the knowledges and leadership of
those who have built and sustained movements and ways of life and epistemolo-
gies that have been in shifting alignment with the heartbeat of this earth since
time immemorial.
The environmental humanities, as a historically white-dominated feld in a par-
ticular academic context, can come to follow the lead of those who, in Priscilla
Ybarra’s words, “never became environmentalists in the frst place”21 because envi-
ronmentalist orientations have reinforced and reassured white supremacy. Ybarra
fnds that the epistemologies of Mexican American and Chicana/o cultures have
from the start been inclusive of nature and wary of notions of possession; they are
thus incompatible with white environmentalist practices and represent a rejection
of the exploitive (command and control) epistemologies that characterize the white
settler. Ybarra traces profound environmental regard in Chicanx traditions that
exceed white environmentalist thought.
The vibrant intellectual productions taking place across the world exemplify
rich and varied epistemologies that counter colonial orders through their very
existence. For those dehumanized by dominant orders, existence is resistance—
existence that includes the epistemologies that sustain lifeways. In their pres-
ence, to continue to teach environmental humanities within dominant frames
is to perpetuate the objectifcation that enables violence against the earth and
its peoples.
In order to honor the cosmological and intellectual diversity of the world and to
dismantle the imposition of colonial orders, this book engages an idea of pluriver-
sality. The term is a resource for both the redress of epistemic harms and engage-
ment with futurity. Pluriversality is often considered in relation to the World Social
Forum slogan: “Another world is possible.”22 Other worlds are possible, and other
 Introduction 7

worlds have been and continue to be. Today, there are approximately 370 million
Indigenous peoples occupying 20 percent of the earth and representing approxi-
mately 5,000 distinct cultures, lifeways, and epistemologies. While we share a
physical planet, the nature-culture systems that exist on this globe are unquan-
tifably varied. In cognizance of this reality, the World Social Forum slogan,
which was initially written in the singular (another world is possible), has, Arturo
Escobar notes,

become more radically pluralized, none the less by social movement mobiliz-
ing against large-scale extractive operations in defense of their territories as
variable worlds where life is lived according to principles that differ signifi-
cantly from those of the global juggernaut unleashed on them.23

Our feld needs to honor these movements and lifeways.

“[R]ealities are plural and always in the making,” Escobar reminds, “and this has
profound political consequences” (ix). What does it mean to stay near these plural
realities-in-the-making in the environmental humanities? And how does one come
to dwell among plurality, without converting that dwelling into ownership,
co-optation, appropriation, or hierarchy?

Against imposition
Mindfulness is one resource I suggest here, in part because it is itself pluriversal—
with innumerable epistemologies that have come under the rubric of contem-
plative practice, with respect for the heterogeneity of these cultural orientations.
Mindfulness, because it ofers suspension—of interpretation, judgment, resolution,
ownership—ofers an epistemological pause, an aperture that creates space between
dominant ideas and what transcends them.
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society defnes contemplative practice
as “any activity undertaken regularly with the intention of quieting the mind and
cultivating deep concentration, calm, and awareness of the present moment.”24
While often secularized in the academy, contemplative pedagogy draws upon
many long-standing legacies of practice. Contemplative pedagogy is understood as
deriving from the “wisdom traditions” of the many yoga philosophies (Hatha and
Tantric, Jnana, Ashtanga, Bhakti) dating back to the Vedic traditions, of ancient
practices of Buddhist meditation that turn from a belief in a separate self, meta-
physical refection from the Suf tradition, and the contemplation of the Jewish
Kabbalah, among other lineages.25
Contemplative pedagogy has seen increasing interest in the university, being
included in the environmental sciences, environmental humanities, and sustainabil-
ity studies (Eaton, Hughes, and MacGregor, 2017; Sol and Wals, 2015; Wamsler,
2017; Wamsler, Brossman, et al., 2018; Wamsler and Brink, 2018; Wapner, 2016).
Eaton, Hughes, and MacGregor’s 2017 collection, building upon the Curriculum
for the Bioregion Initiative, outlines specifc learning goals for sustainability studies
8 Introduction

and states how contemplative practice is germane to each. These goals include the
invitation for students to

• Deepen personal connections to the world around them;

• Navigate the anger, grief, and despair that can arise when highly problematic
issues are studied deeply;
• Build capacity for discernment, to better understand problems and their roots,
their scale, their interconnectedness, as well as self-discernment with respect to
challenging issues and questions;
• Engage multiple perspectives, especially with contested issues;
• Develop a sense of responsibility for the future; make creative responses—as an
antidote to paralysis and cynicisms; sustain themselves for long-term engagement.

These learning goals align with a “whole student” approach to pedagogy,26 as these
goals consider mind, body, and spirit and prioritize active, participative, experiential,
and integrative pedagogy. These goals afrm the life and humanity of each student
and make space for the big questions in life. Behind each of these worthy goals for the
environmental humanities course is not only a need for the support of contemplative
practice to be present to these concerns; behind each of these are also epistemologi-
cal questions. What does it mean to deeply connect with the world, to know the
world in a way that is connective? How are problematic issues framed within diferent
epistemologies? How does an understanding of a problem’s roots, scale, and inter-
connectedness change when multiple epistemologies are considered? How can we
contextualize multiple perspectives as being part of multiple epistemologies and mul-
tiple worlds—diverse lifeways that have been carried forward and that have evolved
in responsive ways over centuries? How is the idea of responsibility also pluriversal?
As Kuokkanen notes: “concepts such as ‘responsibility’ may have radically diferent
meanings in diferent epistemes and systems of thought.”27
The environmental humanities could be a space to teach an orientation to the
cultural complexity of this globe, afrming multiple ways of understanding the radi-
cal interconnectedness and radical diversity of the earth. bell hooks calls us toward
a “commitment to complex analysis and the letting go of wanting everything to be
simple.” This emphasis on complexity is already a topos of the environmental human-
ities: we turn to humanistic study in order to hold the complexity of the world. This
commitment to complex analysis can also be aligned with an anti-racist practice: as
bell hooks notes, “Segregation simplifes; integration requires that we come to terms
with multiple ways of knowing, of interaction.”28 hooks points us to a need for epis-
temic justice to accompany eforts toward equity and inclusion.
This insistence on complexity and epistemic diversity thwarts a one-world uni-
versalism that is born of colonial logics. Complexity means, in Arturo Escobar’s
words, moving

beyond the certitudes of modernity and the conventional categories that, it

is worth underlining, are the very ones used by the institutions perpetuating
 Introduction 9

the crisis; the World Bank, the great corporations, most states, organized
religions, and also, to a large extent, the academy.

Escobar continues, refecting on the categories of knowing that are enforced by

these institutions, the categories that “replicate the conception of the world held
by the powerful . . . in their reports on ‘the ways things are,’ as if the world really were
that way.”29 Neocolonialist manipulations that stratify the globe through systems of
debt produce these constructions. They enact a form of global white supremacy
and stratifcation that has a direct throughline to former incarnations of colonial-
ism. Escobar’s work is an intervention in the “notion of a ‘One-World World’”
which “is predicated on the West’s ability to arrogate to itself the right to be ‘the
world’ and to relegate all other worlds to its rules, to a state of subordination, or
to nonexistence.”30 What would it mean to fundamentally destabilize the hege-
monic “world of the powerful,” or the “one-world world” that, in Marisol de la
Cadena and Mario Blaser’s words, “has granted itself the right to assimilate all other
worlds,”31 or what Walter Mignolo terms “the diversity of the only option (the
Western way)”?32
In embracing a pluriversal orientation as a corrective to one-worldism, this
book works from the Zapatistas’ radical call from the Fourth Declaration of the
Lacandón Jungle: “The nation which we are building is one where all communi-
ties and languages ft, where all steps may walk, where all may laugh, where all
may live the dawn” and what is perhaps the most well-known line from the Fourth
Declaration: “Queremos un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos.” In the world
we want, many worlds ft.33
From the Zapatistas’ call, a range of scholars have investigated pluriversality as
a conceptual resource. Conversations on pluriversality invite criticality about the
ways that “knowledge practices . . . are . . . conditioned to reinstate themselves”34
through ideologies and institutional practices. Pluriversality becomes a lens for
rethinking knowledge-making conventions. Even the momentary choice to use
the word “we” may unintentionally universalize, cover over diference, and repro-
duce hegemony. Thus, pluriversality becomes a “lens for our lenses” or a way of
noticing how one comes to see, the assumptions that are built into an assertion or
knowledge claim. This meta-level double-lensing (i.e., the lens for a lens) allows
one to observe how a frame may be operating. Such double-lensing entails bracket-
ing objectivity, as a way of bracketing one-world thinking. Mignolo describes how
the bracketing of truth and objectivity is a gesture that is necessary to pluriversal
thinking.35
The conception of “Earth as pluriverse”36 is only in part a metaphor. It is out of
respect for the complexity of the cosmos, the interacting ecologies of the earth, and
radical interconnectedness across diferences that pluriversal understandings come
forward. As Escobar writes, “Living in accordance with the idea that there are
multiple worlds, partially connected but radically diferent, entails an entirely dif-
ferent ethic of life, of being-doing-knowing.”37 Worlds—ecosystems, movements,
cosmovisions—ramify on this shared earth.
10 Introduction

This radical acknowledgment of heterogeneity shapes practices. In Blaser

and de la Cadena’s words, “heterogeneous worldings coming together as
a political ecology of practices, negotiating their difficult being together
in heterogeneity.” 38 The difficulty of “being together” of shared life, or
con-vivir, con-viviality is also emphasized in Mignolo: “Conviviality is not
holiday, but a hard and relentless effort toward cosmopolitan localism and
pluriversal futures.” 39 The question of conviviality is a central question of
environment.
The present book is an investigation of what these eforts can look like in the
environmental humanities classroom. The book takes as its central exigency the
forms of epistemic violence and exclusion that are in direct relation to the material
atrocities that continue in our world. To address these violences, I seek to follow
three threads of potential: First, the book emerges out of scholarship on pluriver-
sality in conjunction with anticolonial, antiracist, intersectional feminisms of color
orientations. Second, this text turns to educational praxis and practitioner-based
scholarship on culturally responsive pedagogy, funds of knowledge, community
cultural wealth, and cultural humility. As a third thread in the braided reference
points that this book relies upon, I fnd resources in the feld of contemplative
practice.
I considered titling this book “Against Imposition” taking an epigraph from
Humberto R. Maturana from 1985 (“Biologie der Sozialitat”):

When one puts objectivity in parenthesis, all views, all verses in the multi-
verse are equally valid. Understanding this, you lose the passion for changing
the other.

These words begin the first chapter of Mignolo’s The Darker Side of Western
Modernity. Western models of education have been figured as the activity of
changing the other; the “subject who knows” (teacher) imparting the knowl-
edge that the other (student) is presumed to need. The platitude I learn as
much from my students as they learn from me does not change the fundamentally
patronizing structures of education. The problem is not that education brings
about change; the problem is in the saviorist directionality of change, as an
instructor is (or thinks of themself as being) charged with the task of chang-
ing the other. The power relationship here is the concern, as it was Freire’s
concern in his critique of the banking model of education.40 The power rela-
tionship remains even in so-called “decentered” classroom spaces. Structures
of education remain assimilationist.
I ultimately decided against this title, “Against Imposition,” because some things
do need to be imposed—the necessity of breaking open the frameworks of white
racial logics, settler colonialist perpetuation. This breaking open is done through
the work of thought leaders who write, orate, and organize on Indigenous land
and in diasporas. The intellectual-epistemic work of these thought leaders stands to
give direction to the environmental humanities.
 Introduction 11

Pluriversal studies
This book is in conversation with pluriversal studies, a feld that follows from the
Zapatista movement, the uprising of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional
(EZLN) in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1994. Mignolo has been using the term pluri-
versality in his work across these three decades, identifying how the rhetoric of
modernity and logics of coloniality are two sides of a ribbon running through
multiple centuries of continued history: the rhetoric of modernity being the “con-
stantly named and celebrated (progress, development, growth)” top sheen of the
ribbon, and colonialism being its underside, disavowed and “silenced or named as
problems to be solved by the former (poverty, misery, inequalities, injustices, cor-
ruption, commodifcation, and dispensability of human life).”41 Pluriversal studies
seek to formulate means of releasing the bind of this thread.
A hallmark of pluriversal studies is a trans-comparative approach, reading across
multiple cultural formations and lines of thought while also looking for threads and
throughlines of a reliably interconnected planet: Arturo Escobar looks to Muntu
cosmology, Buddhism, among other intellectual traditions to enact respect for the
“multiplicity of mutually entangled and coconstituting but distinct worlds.”42 To
escape capital-centric and colonial hegemonies, pluriversal thinkers expound the
belief that the “realization of multiple reals/possibles is the best antidote against
globalocentric thinking.” This realization “enables us to consider the power of
place-based and of local becoming in new forms.”43 Thus, a pluriversal approach is
always engaged with ancestral continuity, continuance, and reclamation as it is also
engaged with emergence and futurity.
Together pluriversal thinkers explicate how, in Boaventura de Sousa San-
tos’ words, “the adequate recognition of injustice and the possible overcoming
of oppression can only be achieved by means of an epistemological break.”44
Breaking from genocidal and epistemicidal colonial mentalities requires a repar-
ative economy and approach to mind, body, spirit, and land. In Epistemologies
of the South, Santos identifes epistemicidal monocultures (sharing in Vandana
Shiva’s metaphor-not-metaphor “monocultures of the mind”) that produce
nonexistence in capitalist modernity: specifcally, monocultures of knowl-
edge (and accompanying limiting defnitions of “rigor” and expertise); mono-
cultures of linear time (and accompanying assumptions about teleologies and
disjunctions from tradition); monocultures of the naturalization of diferences
(naturalized social classifcation that perpetuate relations of dominance); mono-
cultures of the logic of the dominant scale (e.g., the universal and the global);
and monocultures of the capitalist logic of productivity. As hegemonic forces,
these monocultures continue what Santos calls the “sociology of absences” that
disappear diverse worldsenses in their totalizing vision. These monocultures are
designed to eradicate the complex ecologies that value diversity, complexity,
and relationality45: ecologies of knowledges, ecologies of temporalities, ecolo-
gies of recognition, ecologies of trans-scales, and ecologies of productivities.
These ecologies counter the modernist assumption of an ontology of separation,
12 Introduction

thinking instead through a lens of radical relationality, interdependence, and co-

constitutive indeterminacy.
An outgrowth of pluriversal studies is what Mario Blaser has called political
ontology. Blaser defnes political ontology as “a loosely connected project emerging
from the convergence of ideas advanced in various scholarly felds,” including Indig-
enous studies, science and technology studies, posthumanism, new materialism, and
political ecology, among others.46 At once a “political sensibility, a problem space,
and a modality of analysis and critique,” in Blaser’s defnition, political ontology
is neither a pedagogical project nor a blueprint for a good life47; instead, political
ontology seeks to realize its commitment to the pluriverse through a variety of
means: respect for multiplicity, mobilization of multiple ontologies, and story.
My questions in the present text grapple with what pluriversal thinking can
mean for teaching, even as pluriversal orientations are anathema to a didactic
method. What does it mean to enact a multiepistemic environmental humanities
within a classroom space, given the vectors of power that characterize those spaces?
What does it mean for the environmental humanities to make good on the core
assertion repeated multiple times across Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ work: that
cognitive and epistemic justice are necessary to social justice?48
An epistemic orientation such as what I’ve outlined cannot neglect the mate-
rial: the integrity of the body, redistribution of wealth and power, land rights,
anti-extractivist recovery and revitalization, self-determination, and more. The
false cleaving of binary thinking has been well-countered. The material and
the epistemic are not separate. To neglect the epistemic is to neglect the ways
in which cultural imaginaries are constitutive. As Escobar notes, “all forms
of politics are ontological in that they all involve an ontological dimension:
they have implications for what counts as real, for modes of existence, and
for adjudicating ethical or nonethical action.”49 A consideration of the onto-
logical and epistemological, then, is necessary for any intervention in political
hegemonies; however, to take heed from Kwakwaka’wakw scholar Sarah Hunt:
“Surely we must engage with the powerful system, but appealing to the law
alone won’t stop the violence”50—solely intervening in the epistemologies that
sustain the violence won’t stop it either. Perhaps it is enough to think of the
attention toward the epistemological and ontological as insufcient but neces-
sary. The lines between epistemological intervention and material change are
multidirectional.
As Mignolo writes in the foreword to the collection Constructing the Pluriverse,
pluriversal studies are grounded in

decolonial projects emerging out of the global political society (deracializing

and depatriarchizing projects, food sovereignty, reciprocal economic organi-
zation and the definancialization of money, decolonization of knowledge and
of being, decolonization of religion as a way to liberate spiritual, decoloniza-
tion of aesthetics as a way to liberate esthesis, etc.).51
 Introduction 13

The reclaiming of knowledge, spirit, and being is tied to decolonial projects. Kuok-
kanen identifes epistemic justice as “the recognition and acknowledgment of the
very existence of a multitude of discourses (or epistemes).” She writes,

Not until hegemonic institutions and individuals have become aware of dif-
ferent discourses, once the multitude of epistemes is made visible, can we
proceed with the project of decolonization, of deconstructing Eurocentric
biases, or dismantling the hierarchies of discourses and epistemes.52

About the text

The argument in this book is inherently incomplete, and I ofer it with vulner-
ability. My intention is to be transparent, before colleagues and students, in how
I consider my own practice as a teacher: the questions I am asking, the steps
I’ve provisionally said “yes” to as I work. I write as someone who doesn’t have
answers, but who nonetheless steps into the classroom day after day with the
responsibility to help create or preserve a space for conversation and thoughtful
activity.
I write as a white woman who teaches in higher education, a system that per-
petuates racism as it maintains its legacy of white supremacy and its entrenched
noblesse oblige orientation. The historically white-centering institution, unless it
has done signifcant transformative work, ofers a racist education that reproduces
inequities for its students.
To become more accountable for this educational situation that I beneft from
and am complicit in, I seek to listen more deeply to the voices of activists, includ-
ing student activists, who have sought to bring higher education, and the larger
system it is part of, into a moment of reckoning. This is the ongoing context of my
learning, and I make it visible here. I am not a singular mind projecting a vision
for how higher education should be remade; this vision should not come from a
singular voice—and it should not be my vision, as I remain embedded in the white,
colonial logics that reared me. Uprooting those logics is lifelong work. As Paulette
Regan writes in Unsettling the Settler Within,

we will always be engaged in the struggle to unlearn racism in our homes,

schools, workplaces, and communities, and . . . we will inevitably make
mistakes along the way. What makes the difference in terms of a life-long
commitment to anti-racism is the willingness to continuously face our mis-
takes and take the actions necessary to make amends on personal and political
levels.53

I write with this intention: to engage in the struggle, to keep a commitment. My

name is listed in the byline because I seek to be accountable. I am accountable for
what it means to teach as mass death continues, caused by the preexisting condition
14 Introduction

of racism and the forms of brutality it produces in healthcare, policing, housing,

education, and innumerable other spheres.
I don’t write with answers, but I write with a sense of answerability. I make
decisions every day that afect the lives of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People
of Color) students and colleagues, due to my situatedness within the institution.
We are linked to one another, one action produces efects for another. We each
have a role to play in transformation. What Angela Davis said in a 2014 speech at
Southern Illinois University is a call to us all: “You have to act as if it were pos-
sible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” I write
with this posture and practice: with the pronounced responsibility to seek radical
transformation.
I also write as a contemplative practitioner, with a practice of mindfulness as I
write. I wrote this book in all seasons: with sun on my face and blankets wrapped
around my body. My intention was to write this book with a practice of attention.
The buzz of a hummingbird’s wings is what I perceive most specifcally at this
moment. The fying jewel is hovering just three feet behind me. Now it fits away.
With each moment of presence in writing these pages, questions stayed with
me about what it means to do scholarship at this moment. I sit with the privilege
of my breath moving in and out of my lungs and the stark questions that shape my
embodiment in the world: What does it mean for me to participate in scholarship,
with all that I don’t know? How can I put myself in spaces where I can learn what
I need to learn? How can I do better to show up for the work of movement-
building? While I want to preserve the possibility of coming to detach from white
racial ways of knowing, I also am conscious of how decolonization and deracial-
ization for someone like myself will never be complete. Given this, what does it
mean for me to teach as a white person when white faculties are disproportionately
represented and empowered, perpetuating continued harms, inequities, and exclu-
sions? The faculty at my campus, a designated Hispanic-serving institution (HSI),
is 72 percent white. I am a benefciary of—and a participant in—the interlocking
systems that have for centuries perpetuated segregation, underrepresentation, mis-
representation, and tremendous harm. What does writing and theorizing about the
environment through the humanities do in this context, and what does it mean to
do this work from my positionality? Referring to Charles Mills’ argument, Harvey
Cormier writes of how white people—even those who may in some ways be “ren-
egades” will not be able to “see things entirely from a nonwhite point of view.”54
My positionality and the sensibility from which I write is important to draw atten-
tion to, in order to demonstrate its limits and the politics of speaking from the
subject-position I inhabit. I bring in my “I” in this passage not to center myself, or
center whiteness, but to acknowledge the contingency and obstructions of my “I.”
This is a core idea in the pages that follow, which grapple with questions regard-
ing positionality, interpretation, recognition, and knowledge-making through the
framework of epistemic justice.
I write not within a framework of answer-giving, but from the truth that there is
no way of opting out of a response. We are always already in response. We respond
 Introduction 15

in our living—in our choices and our actions, in the words we utter or don’t. It
is from this realization that I came to mindfulness and contemplative practice. In
realizing that my life is a response, I also realize that this life calls for mindful atten-
tion. In the posture of living the questions, this writing is not set apart from my life.
If I have a case to make here, it is one that lands on a daily practice of not
presuming to know, as it also remains frm in the assurance that we must fnd a
revolutionary end to racism and interlocking forms of oppression. I have no fnal
pronouncement here other than that intention, set with acknowledgment of my
complicity in sustaining and perpetuating the dehumanizing tendencies of higher
education.
The book is aspirational and is not meant to be a pedagogical “success narra-
tive.” I want to be clear that the pedagogical discussion that follows is by no means
fully realized in the classrooms I facilitate and indeed the ideas described here I
may be able to come only ever asymptotically near. While this is a text about the
utter complexities of teaching, I have become skeptical of what has elsewhere been
called a “recipe-swapping” approach to pedagogy, as if classroom praxis could be
outlined in a series of written ingredients and steps. We cannot make the same
nourishing soups in each of our classes. We each come to the teaching space with
diferent positionings, identities, ways of being in the world, and relationships
to the community of people who make up a class. This makes each educational
moment and gathering its own. In this context, there can be no frm pronounce-
ments for the “how” of pedagogy—we can ofer only the ability to attend to our
practice with a sharper focus, a honed set of questions, and a steady commitment
to transformative practice. The questions we ask about the “how” of things are very
important: to help us envision and embody a practice. Teaching practices shift and
change with every encounter we have with people who stand to teach each other
so much. Each classroom space is emergent.
The choices I’ve made in writing this book come from a consciousness of the
signifcant risks of my position and practice: specifcally, as Zoe Todd teaches, there
is the risk of fattening, distorting, and erasing forms of thinking that I cannot fully
know. My intention is never to render scholars as, in Todd’s words, “disembodied
representatives of an amorphous Indigeneity that serves European intellectual or
political purposes.”55 This colonial orientation toward a generalized Indigeneity
elides “the embodied, legal-governance and spiritual aspects of Indigenous think-
ing”56 and the unique lifeways and cosmo-epistemologies that may be in coalition
with each other, but should not be homogenized.
Vanessa Watts, one of Todd’s interlocutors, echoes the point, identifying how
Indigenous thought is co-opted and used

as a gateway for non-Indigenous thinkers to re-imagine their world. In this,

our [Indigenous thinkers’] stories are often distilled to simply that—words,
principles, morals to imagine the world and imagine ourselves as in the
world. In reading stories this way, non-indigenous peoples also keep control
over what agency is and how it is dispersed.
16 Introduction

This tendency is present, Watts notes, in felds thought by some to be progressive

and aware of social justice concerns: critical science studies, ecofeminism. While
certain lines of thought in these felds “may serve to change the imperialistic ten-
dencies in Euro-Western knowledge production,” Watts writes, “Indigenous histo-
ries are still regarded as story and process—an abstracted tool of the West.”57
With these risks in full view and in humility, I quote often throughout the text,
knowing that the most I can contribute to the conversation is to show up, listen,
and help others like myself listen too. I quote more than I summarize, cognizant
of the risk covering over or obfuscating meaning. Each citation is an attempt to
amplify and direct the reader to the much more there is to be read from the scholars
listed in this book’s bibliography.
I acknowledge the insidious ways in which citational conventions perpetuate
racist, ableist, and heteropatriarchal stratifcation in academic scholarship58; white
academics and content producers have stolen the intellectual heritage of BIPOC
peoples, and reparations have not begun. The examples are many: the supremacist
orientation that appropriates and erases Indigenous contribution to the scientifc
foundations of western research being just one.59 There is also the matter of repu-
tation and amplifcation: Donna Haraway’s concept of situated knowledge follows
from the words of Buchi Emecheta who is much less frequently cited.60 Silvia
Rivera Cusicanqui has noted how Walter Mignolo has obscured and neglected her
own and Indigenous people’s work.61 Rosiek, Snyder, and Pratt usefully identify
the ways in which white-dominated felds of philosophy of science, new material-
ism, feminist materialism, posthumanism, post-qualitative research, feminist tech-
noscience studies, and agential realism ignore agent ontologies found in Indigenous
studies due to racism and settler-colonial bias. This instance of “talking past” plays
out a long-observed reality, identifed in Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Meth-
odologies: that Indigenous thinkers are excluded from the conversation of scholars,
even as issues of Indigeneity may be the so-called object of study. Because dis-
cussions of the scientifc foundations of western research rarely include mention
of the Indigenous contribution to these foundations, Tuhiwai Smith notes, these
discussions perpetuate the implicit premise that it “is simply impossible, ridiculous
even, to suggest that the object of research can contribute anything.”62 Indigenous
peoples become the object of study—the known, excluded from the position of the
knower.
Regrettably, there are no doubt remaining instances in this book of “talking
past,” in part due to my ignorance of intellectual spheres beyond myopic peer-
reviewed journals, including forums of decision-making and coalition-building.
I share this example of my complicity here not as a confessional, but as one more
example of how rectifcation is necessary.
I want to also be accountable for the ways in which a book like this risks con-
tributing to the preponderance of “GREAT WHITE HOPES” scholarship that
Zoe Todd aptly names as a dominating force in academic spaces. White authors’
expressions of our hopes for the felds of study, institutional structures, and peda-
gogic spaces where we fnd belonging can be understood as what Eve Tuck and
 Introduction 17

K. Wayne Yang call settler “moves to innocence.”63 If I hope hard enough and well
enough, I have done my part, these examples of white scholarship would seem to say,
denying complicity and acknowledgment of how white thinkers beneft from the
inequitable systems in place. The book before you seeks no false innocence.

The chapters that follow

This book is an extended literature review, drawing from antiracist scholarship,
contemplative practice, pluriversal studies, Indigenous thought, Black studies, fem-
inist of color theory, and the environmental humanities. It follows texts like LeiLani
Nishime and Kim D. Hester Williams’ Racial Ecologies in understanding ethnic stud-
ies and Indigenous studies as providing the lenses needed to address the most cen-
tral concerns in the environmental humanities. David Pellow and Julie Sze64 have
likewise examined the interrelationships of environmental studies and ethnic stud-
ies, noting tensions as well as intersections. Speaking of the relationships between
ecology and social diference, Pellow has put it clearly: “So the point is not to only
show how these seemingly disparate issues are ‘linked,’ but to demonstrate that they
cannot be un-linked.”65 I argue that the environmental humanities is bereft with-
out the understandings and approaches that are in continual emergence in ethnic
studies and Indigenous studies.66 At the same time, a simple “importation” of these
felds’ ways of knowing into the environmental humanities is problematic, given
the ways that whiteness has confgured the environmental humanities. Ybarra in
Writing the Goodlife chronicles the white-dominated feld of ecocriticism noting
how Latinx literatures and epistemologies, texts, and knowledges were largely
unacknowledged—or when acknowledged were regarded in essentialized ways—
in the feld for decades, even as these knowledges long predate the emergence of
the environmental humanities.
There are unquantifable lines of thought and cultural traditions that speak to
the central exigencies of the environmental humanities. My purpose is to expli-
cate this reality and cue the feld to come to terms with its complicity, as it has
forwarded secular white supremacist orientations. To make environmental justice
central to the feld of the environmental humanities necessitates making epistemic
justice central to the feld.
The synthesis I ofer in the pages that follow is not meant to collapse varied
orientations into one. Instead, I see this book as an act of weaving diferent lines
of thought together, so that the innumerable threads that exist beyond these pages
might be acknowledged and honored. I use the metaphor of weaving in order to
preserve the diference in each fber being woven in—this is not a melding, but is
instead a temporary form. The book is meant to point to what is beyond its pages.
This book is for anyone who teaches about the environment, and it may also be
relevant to contemplative pedagogy scholars and practitioners beyond that disciplin-
ary locus. The book operationalizes a defnition of the environmental humanities
that is broad and inclusive, as it also remains grounded in anti-oppressive pedago-
gies and a prioritization of humanistic inquiry and literacies. I argue for a pursuit of
18 Introduction

not only interdisciplinary but also multiepistemic approaches, underscoring that, in

LeiLani Nishime and Kim D. Hester Williams’ words, “Environmental exploitation
is ideological, and our ability to address environmental degradation depends on our
ability to name and resist those ideologies.”67
Chapter 1 argues for a pluriversal approach as an epistemic demeanor, related to
what has been known as cultural humility. The chapter distinguishes pluriversality
from normative pluralism, aiming to decenter white-settler thinking and dismantle
imperialist capitalist white-supremacist patriarchal politics. The chapter suggests
a posture of “not knowing” that is not a passive stance but is active in guarding
against any sense of mastery or consuming another. Cultural humility, as a frame-
work, provides the means of tracing a frame as a frame—in other words, cultural
and multiepistemic humility enables us to see that our understandings are never
neutral, universal, or absolute. Moreover, cultural humility resists “mastery” as a
value or aim; it is instead practice-based, in-the-moment, and processual.
Chapter 2 delineates the diference between pluriversality and interdisciplin-
arity, unpacking the intellectual discriminations of the interdisciplinary academy.
This chapter names the suppression of knowledges and, thereby, their knowers,
in the white supremacist culture of higher education. The goal is to expose the
epistemological limitations of western environmental thought as these limitations
criss-cross the disciplines. Interdisciplinarity is therefore not a sufcient response
to intellectual discrimination. To what extent do disciplinary practices interrupt
and intervene in dominant ideation? And what are the potential political, social,
ecological, etc. consequences of our disciplinary stories?
Chapter 3 suggests mindfulness approaches as a way of cultivating attention to
what the foregoing discussion means for classroom practice. Following Rhonda
Magee, Ruth King, and Resmaa Menakem who have suggested that contemplative
practices are germane to anti-oppression work, this chapter asks: What resources are
we ofering students for dismantling systems of oppression and for navigating the
worlds they know in ways that honor cultural practices and prompt further seeking
of cultural traditions from a place of self-determination? To be clear, simply adopt-
ing mindfulness practices in the classroom is not enough to dislodge and dismantle
white supremacy. Attention to the cultural contingency of mindfulness practices as
they are embedded in multiple understandings of self-in-world is essential.
Chapter 4 investigates what reading and writing in the classroom might look
like when epistemic justice becomes a guiding orientation for our work. The envi-
ronmental humanities provides an occasion for investigating the narratives that
shape our lives and our approaches to what is most urgent. Our literacy practices in
the environmental humanities contribute to the cultural imagination, as they also
enable a critical investigation of the cultural imaginations we inhabit. What does it
mean to open spaces for “thinking otherwise”? What does it mean to interrogate
ideological closures and identify how an author may mobilize dominant narratives
and assumptions, without insisting on the forms of critique that tear down a text
in critical evaluation? Mindfulness practice may ofer the environmental humani-
ties internal and collective capaciousness to create room for addressing epistemic
 Introduction 19

injustice and experiences of environmental injustice and for prompting regenera-

tive imagination to meet uncertain futures.
Our literacy practices provide an occasion for multiepistemic humility as we
should guard against an assumption of “cultural continuity” between writer and
reader. We should not assume that what is true for me is true for another. As
readers, we should not assume that we have a full understanding of the texts we
encounter. We should read with the cultural humility that resides in diference
and seeks to learn what is ofered without the demand for knowability—to follow
where the text leads, without the demand that the text is incorporable into one’s
own sense of self or ways of knowing the world, while also remaining open to how
the text may prompt an unraveling of dominant assumptions.
The interdisciplinary feld of environmental humanities represents aspirations
for the potential of humanistic teaching and research to address our world’s most
urgent intersectional problems: injustices that afect multiple populations, species,
and ecologies. Mindfulness practices reveal to us the ways we have of knowing
the world—understanding these ways to be contingent, and acknowledging that
our existence exceeds those scripts. It is here we fnd the possibility to know the
world in ways that are not predetermined or programmatic and to meet our fellow
bodymind-knowers of this planet, across species, with greater respect.

Notes
1 Bettina L. Love, “Teachers, We Cannot Go Back to the Way Things Were,”EdWeek, 29 April
2020, www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-teachers-we-cannot-go-back-to-the-way-
things-were/2020/04.
2 Loveless continues the point: “As feminist, antiracist, and decolonizing theorists have
long taught us, pedagogical ideologies—regimes of truth—configure the parameters of
legitimate research questions as well as what counts as rigorous or excellence for both
student and teacher. And, in turn, the ways in which internal and national granting
boards understand the stakes and parameters of a field.” Natalie Loveless, How to Make
Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation (Duke UP, 2019) 13.
3 Bettina L. Love, We Want to Do More than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of
Educational Freedom (Beacon, 2019) 2.
4 Love, We Want to Do More, 14. “Mankind” here is, I believe, used deliberately to under-
score the patriarchy in the white supremacist thinking that Love identifies.
5 bell hooks, Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom (Routledge, 2009) 29.
As bell hooks notes, “imperialist capitalist white-supremacist patriarchal politics has
shaped learning communities, affecting both the way knowledge has been presented to
students and the nature of that information” (29). We could add to this list of intersec-
tional oppressions speciesism. David Naguib Pellow notes, “human suffering and social
inequality also are sites where . . . pain is intimately linked to the harm visited upon frag-
ile ecosystems and other animals. . . . Environmental justice struggles reveal how power
flows through the multi-species relationships that make up life on Earth, often resulting
in violence and marginalization for the many and environmental privileges for the few.”
He continues, “populations are marked for erasure and early death. Such ideological and
institutional othering is linked to the more-than-human world as well.” David N. Pellow,
What Is Critical Environmental Justice? (Polity, 2018) 2–3, 17.
6 Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Geno-
cide Research 8.4 (2004): 387–409.
20 Introduction

7 hooks 32. Daniel Heath Justice, Review of Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native
America by Eva Marie Garroutte,” (Wicazo Sa Review 20.1 (2005): 144. Quoted in Alan-
nah Young Leon, and Denise Nadeau, “Embodying Indigenous Resurgence: ‘All Our
Relations’ Pedagogy,” Sharing Breath: Embodied Learning and Decolonization, edited by
Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong (Athabasca UP, 2018) 74.
8 Thanks to John Johnson for this point.
9 See Sara Ahmed, On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (Duke UP,
2012).
10 Rauna Kuokkanen, Reshaping the University: Responsibility, Indigenous Epistemes, and the
Logic of the Gift (U of British Columbia P, 2007) 16.
11 Kyle Powys Whyte, “Is It Colonial Déjà Vu? Indigenous Peoples and Climate Injustice,”
Humanities for the Environment: Integrating Knowledges, Forging New Constellations of Prac-
tice, edited by Joni Adamson and Michael Davis (Earthscan Publications, 2017) 88, 102.
Daniel Wildcat, Red Alert! Saving the Planet with Indigenosu Knowledge (Fulcrum, 2009).
12 Sarah Jaquette Ray, The Ecological Other: Environmental Exclusion in American Culture
(U of Arizona P, 2013) 1.
13 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 2nd ed.
(Zed, 2012) 58.
14 Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty (Duke UP,
2006) 139.
15 la paperson, A Third University Is Possible (U of Minnesota P, 2017). Web.
16 bell hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (Routledge, 2003) 71. See also la
paperson, A Third University Is Possible (U of Minnesota P, 2007).
17 hooks. Teaching Critical Thinking, 26.
18 Macarena Gómez-Barris, The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives
(Duke UP, 2017) xvii, xviii. Enrique Dussel, The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of “the
Other” and the Myth of Modernity (Continuum, 1995).
19 See Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar, Rhythms of the Pachakuti: Indigenous Uprising and State Power
in Bolivia (Duke UP, 2014) which is an account of a “dynamic wave of social potential that
affected public life in plural, polyphonic ways. This opened a space-time of Pachakuti. In
other words, it produced a social context defined by disrupting what until then has been
accepted as a normal part of every day life” (xix). This disruption includes a “rejection
of the following basic assumptions: the separation of production and reproduction from
everyday life and from the material conditions for social development and management;
the delegation of social sovereignty to ‘governing’ representatives as the foundation for all
political activity; and the restriction of the individual and collective creation of values for
social well-being to the oppressive constraints of material value and capital” (xxii). It also
includes a rejection of the “symbolic structures that recognize certain forms of domination
as acceptable; in other words, the relationship of command-obedience entrenched in great
hierarchical divisions between genders and ethnicities” (xxiii).
20 Mario Blaser, “Ontological Conflicts and the Stories of Peoples in Spite of Europe,”
Current Anthropology 54.5 (2013): 557.
21 Priscilla Solis Ybarra, Writing the Goodlife: Mexican American Literature and the Environment
(U of Arizona P, 2016) 7.
22 See Boaventura De Sousa Santos, The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and
Beyond (Zed, 2006).
23 Arturo Escobar, Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible (Duke UP, 2020) ix.
24 Dan Edwards, et al. The Activist’s Ally: Contemplative Tools for Social Change (Center for
Contemplative Mind in Society, 2007).
25 For more on the legacies from which contemplative practice draws, see Tobin Hart,
“Opening the Contemplative Mind in the Classroom,” Journal of Transformative Education
2 (2004): 29.
26 David Louis Schoem, Christine Modey, and Edward P. St. John. Teaching the Whole Stu-
dent: Engaged Learning with Heart, Mind, and Spirit (Stylus, 2017).
 Introduction 21

27 Kuokkanen, Reshaping the University, 12. Quoting Rodolphe Gashé Inventions of Dif-
ference, Kuokkanen further explicates the different epistemologies related to the term
“responsibility”: “A normative definition in the West views responsibility ‘as a mechan-
ical application of a framework of rules that simultaneously relieves the subject of the
onus of a decision and, hence, all liability. Yet responsibility implies a measured response
that can be carried out ‘only if the decision is truly a decision, not a mechanical reac-
tion to, or an effect of, a determinate cause. Western liberal notions of responsibility
are often constructed as a social Darwinist ‘burden of the fittest,’ with the benevolent
imperialist self cast as ‘helping’ those less ‘fortunate.’ In this discourse, responsibility soon
becomes nothing more than a duty, as is apparent, for example, in the UN Declaration
of Human Responsibilities, which seeks to establish philosophical foundations for a
global ethic” (41).
28 hooks, Teaching Community, 78.
29 Escobar, Pluriversal Politics, 6.
30 Escobar, Pluriversal Politics, 14.
31 Marisol de la Cadena and Mario Blaser, A World of Many Worlds (Duke UP, 2018) 3.
32 Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial
Options (Duke UP, 2011) 298.
33 Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, “Fourth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle,”
The Zapatista Reader, edited by Tom Hayden (Thunder’s Mouth / Nation Books, 2002)
250.
34 de la Cadena and Blaser, A World of Many Worlds, 6.
35 Mignolo, Darker Side, 52.
36 This phrase is Escobar’s in Pluriversal Politics, xvii.
37 Escobar, Pluriversal Politics, 27.
38 de la Cadena and Blaser, A World of Many Worlds, 4.
39 Mignolo, Darker Side, 176.
40 Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary edition (Continuum, 2000).
41 Mignolo, Darker Side, xviii.
42 Escobar, Pluriversal Politics, 75.
43 Escobar, Pluriversal Politics, xx.
44 Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide, 2nd
edition (Routledge, 2016) viii–ix.
45 Santos, Epistemologies of the South, 175.
46 Blaser, “Ontological Conflicts,” 548.
47 Blaser, “Ontological Conflicts,” 552 and 559.
48 Santos, Epistemologies of the South, viii.
49 Escobar, Pluriversal Politics, xiv.
50 Quoted in Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks, 102.
51 Mignolo, Foreword to Bernd Reiter, Constructing the Pluriverse: The Geopolitics of Knowl-
edge (Duke UP, 2018) xiii.
52 Kuokkanen, Reshaping the University, 77.
53 Paulette Regan, Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and
Reconciliation in Canada (U of British Columbia P, 2010), 23.
54 Harvey Cormier, “Ever Not Quite,” Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, edited by Shan-
non Sullivan and Nancy Tuana (SUNY P, 2007) 63.
55 Zoe Todd, “An Indigenous Feminist’s Take on the Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’
Is Just Another Word for Colonialism,” Journal of Historical Sociology 29.1 (March
2016): 7.
56 Todd, “An Indigenous Feminist’s Take,” 9.
57 Vanessa Watts, “Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency Amongst Humans and Non-
Humans (First Woman and Sky Woman Go on a European World Tour!),” Decoloniza-
tion: Indigeneity, Education, and Society 2.1 (2013): 26, 28.
22 Introduction

58 See Sara Ahmed, “White Men” (4 November 2014), https://feministkilljoys.com/2014/

11/04/white-men/. See also Katherine McKittrick, Dear Science and Other Stories (Duke
UP, 2021).
59 Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 63.
60 This is noted in Katherine McKittrick’s Dear Science and Other Stories (Duke UP, 2021).
61 Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Ch’ixinakax Utxiwa: On Decolonising Practices and Discourses
(Polity, 2020).
62 Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 63, 64.
63 Tuck and Yang define this term as follows: “Settler moves to innocence are those strate-
gies or positioning that attempt to relieve the settler of feelings of guilt or responsibility
without giving up land or power or privilege, without having to change much at all. In
fact, settler scholars may gain professional kudos or a boost in their reputations for being
so sensitive and self-aware” (Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a
Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, & Society 1.1 (2012): 10).
64 Here I am referencing the “Building and Fighting at the Crossroads of Ethnic Stud-
ies and Environmental Studies panel, presented at the American Studies Association
Annual Meeting in Hawaii, November 2019. While I was not in attendance at this
panel discussion, David N. Pellow’s excellent paper “Environmental Studies and Ethnic
Studies: Tensions, Collaborations, Intersections” was shared with me by Sarah Jaquette
Ray. In this paper, Pellow references Julie Sze’s talk, given at Columbia University,
titled “Environmental Justice and Ethnic Studies: The Puzzling Split.” In “What Is
Critical Environmental Justice?” Pellow links his work with fields such as critical race
theory, critical race feminism, ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies, political
ecology, anti-statist/anarchic theory, ecological feminism, queer theory, and disability
studies.
65 Pellow, “Environmental Studies and Ethnic Studies,” 2.
66 Dian Million makes the important point that these fields should be understood as dis-
tinct. She clarifies: “I posit that environmental racism and environmental justice may
have important overlapping interests with Indigenous interests, but we cannot go for-
ward without acknowledging their profound difference. There is a shift in relations
between working from the perspective of Indigenism to working against environmental
racism and for environmental justice. . . . I want to take those differences, differences in
epistemologies (ways of knowing) and ontologies (ways of being) into account.”
67 LeiLani Nishime and Kim D. Hester Williams. Racial Ecologies (U of Washington P,
2018).

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1
PLURIVERSALITY AND
MULTIEPISTEMIC HUMILITY

As Boaventura de Sousa Santos is well known for saying across his many books:
“there can be no global social justice without global cognitive justice.” Cognitive
and epistemic justice move beyond common models of distributive and participa-
tory justice, seeking justice for the life knowledges and lifeways of being of histori-
cally marginalized peoples.
Epistemic injustice may be most readily thought of as the means by which
someone is made to be systemically uncredible. The injustice is that which enables
the aprioristic rejection of testimony or the dismantling of cultural systems.1 This
rejection can be a form of denial, dismissal, or unhearing that is at once interper-
sonal and structural. Epistemic injustice includes the ways in which people may
be disbelieved when speaking of racialized, gendered, or ableist harms, although
epistemic injustice extends beyond this all too common tendency. José Medina
defnes epistemic injustice by its manifestations: “such as unequal access to and
participation in knowledged practices, vitiated testimonial dynamics, phenomena
of hermeneutical marginalization,” with testimony here being “any kind of telling
in and through which the expression and transmission of knowledge becomes pos-
sible.”2 Spivak’s question “Can the subaltern speak?” is the question: what condi-
tions enable the unhearing?3
Many knowledges and ways of being remain unheard in environmental human-
ities classrooms. Consider, for example, the Indigenous Principles of Just Transi-
tion (2018) presented by the Indigenous Environmental Network,4 an alliance of
Indigenous peoples who advocate for the adherence to Indigenous knowledge
and natural law with a focus on Turtle Island. The Principles of Just Transition
document foregrounds Indigenous prophecy. The earth is out of balance, a result
of occupation and colonization and the necessity of living in accordance with
Indigenous peoples’ respective Original Instructions which were given to Indig-
enous peoples at the time of creation. The principles of just transition outlined
DOI: 10.4324/9781003037439-2
 Pluriversality and multiepistemic humility 27

in this document afrm Indigenous responsibility, duty, and respect to sacred cre-
ation principles and natural laws of Mother Earth and Father Sky. A just transi-
tion framework is bereft without recognition of the epistemologies represented in
this document, but how often is climate change taught in environmental humani-
ties courses without accountability to these principles and the communities who
authored them?
The relegation of ways of knowing is a manifestation of white supremacist think-
ing that is taken for granted. As Charles Mills notes in The Racial Contract, white-
authored textbooks and courses have taken white racial privilege “so much for
granted that they do not even see it as political, as a form of domination.” He con-
tinues, “the system of domination by which white people have historically ruled
over and, in certain important ways, continue to rule over nonwhite people—is
not seen as a political system at all. It is just taken for granted; it is the background
against which other systems, which we are to see as political, are highlighted.”5 This
dominating structure goes unnamed, uninterrogated. White supremacy becomes
so assumed that it becomes invisible, the hegemonic background of knowing—
against which multiple ways of being are already undermined. As Mills notes,

Native American, African American, and Third and Fourth World political
thought, historically focused on issues of conquest, imperialism, colonialism,
white settlement, land rights, race and racism, slavery, jim crow, reparations,
apartheid, cultural authenticity, national identity, indigenismo, Afrocentrism,
etc. . . . hardly appear in mainstream political philosophy, but they have been
central to the political struggles of the majority of the world’s population.6

What Mills says of the feld of philosophy here also applies to the environmental
humanities. When the environmental humanities take up questions of nature, cli-
mate, animality, and materialism in ways that divest from, leave unmentioned, or
push to the margins the forms of knowing that center the experiences, histories,
and knowledges of those who have sufered the efects of world systems, the feld
reafrms its oppressive legacy. Epistemic justice requires interrogating the terms by
which knowledges are considered legitimate, the terms by which the exigencies
are determined. Epistemic justice requires undermining the systems that sabotage
Black, Indigenous, Third and Fourth World thought.
Miranda Fricker identifes the terms by which one’s capacities as a knower
become undermined, focusing on two forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial
injustice (injustice in who becomes enabled to speak, who is credible as a knower)
and hermeneutical injustice (injustice in how one is understood against the inter-
pretive regimes that preexist them). Notably, Fricker’s text has been criticized for
enacting that which it names: itself representing a form of epistemic injustice (or
what Nora Berenstain describes as “white feminist structural gaslighting”)7 in both
Fricker’s assumptions and her citation practices: she omits the scholarship of Charles
Mills, George Yancy, and additional philosophers of color who have theorized the
racialized politics of epistemic justice.8
28 Pluriversality and multiepistemic humility

Epistemic injustice is a profound violence that ricochets into other violences:

the denial of one’s existence, the denial of the grievability of a life, and the denial
of one’s rights to the resources that enable their lifeways. Vandana Shiva’s work has
focused on how epistemic injustice is directly material, translated into damaged
food systems and the invasion of sovereignties. Using the term “monoculture,”
which refers to both the industrial farming practice and the insistence on the eleva-
tion of a singular dominant culture, Shiva notes, “monocultures frst inhabit the
mind, and are then transferred to the ground.”9 She, with Boaventura de Sousa
Santos and many others, writes of the epistemic injustice committed against many
knowledge systems of the world through the monopoly of science and the tech-
nologies it sanctions.10 As Shiva writes in Monocultures of the Mind, knowledge
systems are made to disappear through the negation of their existence, through
the insistence on globalized and totalizing knowledge regimes under neoliberal-
ism,11 and through the supremacist thinking built into these knowledge regimes.
Local knowledges are made to disappear, she writes, “by denying . . . the status of
a systematic knowledge, and assigning it the adjectives of ‘primitive’ and ‘unscien-
tifc.’” This intellectual colonization is carried out not only by the so-called “green
economy” and developmentalism but also through the maintenance of academic
systems that produce and validate knowledges. Shiva writes of how the formation
of western science is poorly equipped for self-examination and the dismantling of
its own discriminations. Western, dominant science makes itself absolute and there-
fore unquestionable, proscribing and making taboo any consequential reevaluation
of its fundamental methods.12 Western science makes itself sacrosanct, as it denies
what other knowledge systems make sacred. This is the maneuvering of epistemic
injustice.
Accountability to what Santos, Medina, Mills, and Shiva identify as epistemic
injustice must be central to the practice of the environmental humanities. The
environmental humanities is imbricated in these systems of injustice and at the
same time has the responsibility to continually intervene in them. Despite inten-
tions, the feld, along with overlapping felds of sustainability studies, critical sci-
ence studies and science and technology studies, exist inside of the assumptions
of dominant knowledge. There is no “cure-all” to be found in a single discipline,
especially when that discipline of thought was formed within the western knowl-
edge system of the academy. Participation in these felds does not equate to a
decolonizing approach that validates the vast knowledge diversity of the globe,
inseparable from the lands from which these knowledges emerged, nor do these
felds exist in a space apart from the racial contract that benefts white people.
The racial contract, named and described by Mills, is an epistemological contract
“between those categorized as white over the nonwhites, who are thus the objects
rather than the subjects of the agreement.”13 The contract creates “a cognitive and
moral economy psychically required for conquest, colonization, and enslavement”
and the active sustaining of continued systems of oppression.14
We are called to attend to the terms and theories we mobilize within the environ-
mental humanities. As Métis anthropologist Zoe Todd notes, “terms and theories
 Pluriversality and multiepistemic humility 29

can act as gentrifers in their own right.”15 Heather Davis and Zoe Todd illustrate
this point, taking as an example the term Anthropocene—that disciplinary cross-
over term attributed to Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer. Davis and Todd make
the argument that the term is itself inscribed within colonial thinking, noting the
“failure of the Anthropocene, as a concept to adequately account for power rela-
tions.”16 By fattening all of humanity into the prefx “Anthropo,” the term obfus-
cates disparities in who has contributed to—and who now bears the most brutal
efects of—climate change. In turn, the term makes it difcult to see that, in Davis
and Todd’s words, “ecocide logics that now govern our world are not inevitable
or ‘human nature.’”17 Citing Swedish scholars Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg,
Todd shows how “the current framing of the Anthropocene blunts the distinctions
between the people, nations, and collectives who drive the fossil-fuel economy and
those who do not.” She continues, “The complex and paradoxical experiences of
diverse people as humans-in-the-world, including the ongoing damage of colonial
and imperialist agendas, can be lost when the narrative is collapsed to a universal-
izing species paradigm” (as “anthropo”) that emphasizes the human species rather
than the systems that have made some the benefciaries of others’ exploitation.18
Not only the naming but also the dating of the Anthropocene is problematic.
The issue of periodization is much debated in the literature, but Davis and Todd
insist on the necessity of acknowledging continued legacies of colonialism in any
drawing of a timeline. “[T]he Anthropocene is not a new event,” they write, “but
is rather the continuation of practices of dispossession and genocide.”19 They con-
tinue, “the Anthropocene, and the uneven impacts on the global poor, can be
understood not just as an unfortunate coincidence or accident, but rather as a
deliberate extension of colonial logic.”20 The terms we use should foreground, rather
than cover over, this reality.
As Davis and Todd note, several terms have been suggested as alternatives to
the Anthropocene: Capitalocene, Eurocene, White Supremacy Scene, Chthulu-
cene.21 These are useful terms, but their use may still serve to neutralize, or mark as
inevitable, the capitalist logics, eurocentrism, and white supremacy that the terms
name. The assumption that these realities are just a “given of our era” may weaken
a capacity for transformation and for redressing the colonial past.
Anna Gade, in a text on Muslim environmentalisms, further extends the cri-
tique of the term as she accuses Anthropocene thinking of “ethical abdication” as it
mobilizes “cold scientifc periodization on the one hand and emotional resorts of
hope and alarm on the other.”22 This ethical abdication, in Gade’s view, produces
the existential crisis that she describes as a

struggle with the apprehension of precarity—political, sentimental,

existential—that no longer represents environmental problems on a scale of
manageability, but rather on overwhelming magnitudes of crisis (late market
capitalism, nuclear, and/or climate disaster, survival and well-being of popu-
lations, mass species extinction, ocean and earth systems in collapse, and so
forth).23
30 Pluriversality and multiepistemic humility

This particular crisis in secular environmental thought manifests the inheritance of

colonialism. Colonialism sets the course that now produces this crisis; the limits of
the logics of “command and control” are being exposed.
The logics of colonialism remain deeply embedded in environmental discourses.
Zoe Todd reads these logics in climate change discourse, specifcally in construc-
tions of climate as aer nullius. Todd introduces the term aer nullius as a way of nam-
ing the colonial “destroy and replace” orientation that is imposed not only on the
land but also on the climate. Developmentalist models of climate that prioritize
isolated techno-fxes, carbon capture, and geoengineering deny climate as interwo-
ven into diverse ecological systems inclusive of human beings; these technologized
“solutions” are an extension of colonial thinking that sees air as resource, not as rela-
tionship. In this thinking, the atmosphere becomes a frontier belonging to no one
and waiting to be saved, with the given being that the savior is a colonial power.
The illogic of this orientation—knowing that it is western capital expansion that
continues to perpetuate the climate crisis—does not slow its march in the direction
of techno-remedies bought and sold as free market commodities.
To intervene, academic discourse requires more capacity to question how
knowledges are shaped. If our intention as a feld is to become more broadly aware
of the radical diversity and interdependency of our world—as we work to inter-
vene in the forces that fail to ofer each worldly participant due respect and dig-
nity—then our work is in part to understand how those forces of failure may move
through us. What the environmental humanities may be best equipped to do is
uproot the devastating, yet contingent, epistemologies that sustain planetary and
social harms. The dominant systems are contingent in that they are historical, and,
in Shiva’s words, they are parochial: she writes,

the dominant system is also a local system, with its social basis in a particular
culture, class and gender. It is not universal in an epistemological sense. It is
merely the globalised version of a very local and parochial tradition.24

How can we leverage the praxis of humanistic study to demonstrate the contin-
gency of dominant knowledge regimes so that they may be dismantled? How can
we orient the humanities toward the radical pluriversality of our globe? This plu-
riversality is in a reciprocal relationship with biodiversity. As Shiva writes, “Diverse
ecosystems give rise to diverse life forms, and to diverse cultures. The co-evolution
of cultures, life forms and habitats has conserved the biological diversity on this
planet. Cultural diversity and biological diversity go hand in hand.”25 The envi-
ronmental humanities can ensure that this truth is respected, to join the robust
movements and cultures that daily assert this reality against the hegemonic and
monopolizing forces that seek to cover the globe.
The analytical capacity of the humanities readies us for an examination of the
assumptions built into master narratives. Within the frameworks and practices
prioritized in the humanities—close reading, exposition of systems of thought,
explication of the politics of representation, and so on—we may be equipped, for
 Pluriversality and multiepistemic humility 31

example, to identify neoliberal logics and trace how these logics are embedded in
a particular discourse. To be clear, the suggestion that humanistic study may ofer
key tools for calling into question the givens of our world does not deny the deep
embeddedness of humanistic thought in systems of dominance or its complicity in
epistemic injustice. However, the practices associated with humanistic study (analy-
sis of the situatedness of knowledge, metadiscursive thought, interrogation of a
social imaginary, cultural production, etc.) have been utilized by practitioners rep-
resenting multiple ways of knowing. That said, the particular confguration of the
humanities within the academy has been fused with particular colonial “enlighten-
ment” ideas of humanitas and who counts as “Man.” This history must be accounted
for in any mobilization of humanistic study, even as we hold out the potential for
the humanities to do counterhegemonic work.
In the humanities, we may consider ourselves ready to critique the systems
within which we are embedded, but uprooting white supremacist knowledge
regimes is ongoing and thorough work, requiring a persistent set of questions:
What “ontological designs”26 do we hold in our classes and in our scholarship?
How do we design our thinking in ways that are radically respectful of diverse ways
of being on this globe? What onto-epistemologies do we remain close to and at
what risk? And what onto-epistemologies can we better respect, better witness,
better learn from, without a demand to consume, own, know? An environmental
humanities that respects pluriversality and that dismantles extractive hegemonic
systems is possible.

Against normative pluralism

Afro-Caribbean scholar M. Jacqui Alexander defnes pedagogy as “the imperative
of making the world in which we live intelligible to ourselves and to each other.”27
Here, she is pointing to the reciprocal investments we must make in order to cross
into a metaphysics of interdependence, into an epistemology that prioritizes rela-
tionality in diference. The type of intelligibility Alexander describes requires a
multitude of cultural understandings, a cognizance that remains persistently atten-
tive to the racialization and colonization written into the moment of relation in
order to enact a form of resistance. Thus, Alexander’s discussion of pedagogy is not
a simple act of recognition. It subverts easy pluralism, what Ann DuCille in Skin
Trade calls “the academic merchandising of diferent diference.”28 DuCille is cri-
tiquing the tokenizing and fattening approaches of ofcial discourses that mobilize
trite themes of diversity and equality while keeping gross disparities in place.
Chandra Mohanty defnes this normative pluralistic29 approach as the assump-
tion that “we all occupy separate, diferent, and equally valuable places.” Norma-
tive pluralism also has the essentializing orientation of defning experience “not in
terms of individual qua individual, but in terms of an individual as representative
of a cultural group.” This orientation, she writes, only serves to depoliticize and
dehistoricize as it reafrms the status quo “in the name of cooperation and har-
mony.”30 Mohanty critiques the “additive approach” to inclusion that she fnds
32 Pluriversality and multiepistemic humility

in higher education: “recruiting ‘diverse’ people, introducing ‘diferent’ curricu-

lum units while engaging in teaching as usual—that is, not shifting the normative
culture-vs.-subcultures paradigm.”31 Mohanty names the pedagogical challenge we
face by posing the question:

how do we undermine the notions of multiculturalism as melting pot, or

multiculturalism as cultural relativism that so permeate U.S. consumer cul-
ture and that are mobilized by the corporate academic as a form of con-
tainment, and practice a multiculturalism that is about the decolonization
of received knowledges, histories, and identities, a multiculturalism that
foregrounds questions of social justice and material interests, which actively
combats the hegemony of global capital?32

Melting pot multiculturalism and an easy cultural pluralism is compatible with

hegemonic systems, as it does nothing to change uneven power relations. That
which is centered remains centered in what María Lugones calls “the ideology of
the ethnocentric racial state which privileges the dominant culture as the only cul-
ture to ‘see with.’”33 This ethnocentrism may invite multiple points of view only to
assimilate, gaze upon, neutralize, and ultimately obliterate them.
These “valorizations of melting-pot multiculturalism’s sameness,” or sameness-
in-diference, to use AnaLouise Keating’s words in the book Transformation Now!,34
are ultimately performative as they also represent a form of colonial assimilation-
ist expansion—taking up the “other” into cannibalizing knowledge regimes.
The presentation of a benign coexistence obfuscates the continued genocides of
colonialism.35
To seek epistemic justice is to reject assimilationist “melting pot multicultural-
ism” that tokenistically acknowledges cross-cultural understanding while keeping
dominant ideologies frmly in place. Multiepistemic practices must resist normative
pluralism that reduces and contains knowledges and identities. Pluralism, operating
out of a dominant ideology, arrests worldviews into discrete, essentialist units, lock-
ing them in time. The move to “lock in time” is born of the settler-colonial elimi-
nation narrative: creating the notion that Indigenous worldsenses are “gone” from
the modern world, relegated to history. As Rauna Kuokkanen notes, “Worldviews,
ontologies, cosmologies, values, and systems of knowledge are dynamic and con-
stantly evolving, so it is impossible to defne an indigenous episteme (or more spe-
cifcally, a Sami, Cree, Inuit, or Salish episteme).”36 Epistemes are not collectable
as knowledges that can be incorporated into dominant frames. Thus, normative
pluralism’s additive model is corroding. The reductive act of adding cosmologies to
existing western knowledges denies their incommensurability and ignores the way
power relations are maintained. Normative pluralism enables a nominal “respect
for diversity” to replace the necessary redress of persistent intersectional oppres-
sions. “Respect for” is not enough. “Mere respect tends to create a climate of
‘repressive tolerance,’” Kuokkanen notes, “in which indigenous people and their
epistemes are allowed to exist in the celebratory spirit of diferent perspectives or
 Pluriversality and multiepistemic humility 33

points of view but are not recognized, heard, or understood even superfcially and
relativistically.”37 To truly recognize these epistemes would fundamentally desta-
bilize the order of the world, as these epistemes confront the frameworks and
hierarchies dominant systems are built upon. When this decolonizing form of rec-
ognition does not occur, the result is a form of tolerance that amounts to repres-
sion, as ways of knowing continue to be marginalized. This is a form of violence
shrouded, but not hidden, in liberal discourses of appreciation for diversity and
tolerance.
Jodi Melamed38 identifes how repressive tolerance and normative pluralism have
been central to the apparatus of humanistic education. In Represent and Destroy, she
identifes three successively prominent versions of what she terms “ofcial antira-
cism”—which is antiracist in name only and which serves to deter radical trans-
formation in its performativity.39 Focusing on post-war US policy and practice,
Melamed diagnoses the formal or ofcial antiracisms that perpetuate the logics
of white supremacy under a lexicon that includes terms and tropes such as race
reform, racial progress, inclusion, and more.
Melamed outlines three periods associated with three versions of ofcial anti-
racism: First, the racial liberalism of the mid-1940s to 1960s was a “framework
that conceived of racism as prejudice and promised to release liberal freedoms
from racial restrictions by extending equal opportunity, possessive individualism,
and cultural citizenship.”40 These liberal discourses—while circulating “under the
motto of creating change for the good of society”—shored up the status quo and
reafrmed hierarchized relations: “the superior oppressor and inferior oppressed.”41
We can turn to bell hooks to further elucidate this point: in Teaching Community,
hooks refects on how “many people supported inclusion only when diverse ways
of knowing were taught as subordinate and inferior to the superior ways of know-
ing informed by Western metaphysical dualism and dominator culture.”42 Projects
meant merely to extend access to equal opportunity, possessive individualism, and
citizenship—launched under a patina of white “benevolence”—can only reinstate
the disparity between the giver and the given, as they also “colonize the consensual
real” (Melamed’s apt phrase) with the hegemonic orders that are “inevitably reduc-
tive and violating”43 to those whose lives are acknowledged only as a second step,
with the rights of some extended to “others” only secondarily.
In Melamed’s periodization, the liberal multiculturalism of the 1980s to 1990s
brings about the canon wars in the humanities. Liberal multiculturalism’s ofcial
antiracism emphasized representation and the inclusion of diverse voices while
omitting the continued realities of racial violence from the presentation. Under the
rubric of “representation, authenticity and gaining voice,” liberal multiculturalism
insisted on a dematerialized conception of race, ignoring its reinstitution of difer-
ential power.44 Melamed writes of this form of ofcial antiracism:

As multicultural ideas of integration, representation, and recognition in cul-

ture (the last narrowly construed as aesthetics) became the horizon for know-
ing race and antiracism, they deflected attention from the devastating and
34 Pluriversality and multiepistemic humility

accelerating consequences of private capital’s economic prerogatives for black

and brown lives.45

Again, in this second confguration in Melamed’s timeline, perfunctory gestures of

recognition are instrumentalized in the dominant culture to ofer the appearance of
change (i.e., in the “gaining of voice”) that covers over the continued replication
of gross disparities and the ways in which cultural representation does not extend
to political decision-making power.
The fnal period described in Melamed’s text is the neoliberal multiculturalism
of the 2000s that recycles liberal multicultural language now in terms of “open
society” and “economic freedoms” and “consumerist diversity.” This method enacts
racist “ofcial antiracism” by assigning to all humans a neoliberal personhood pre-
mised on the belief that the market is rightfully equipped to distribute resources
and manage human life. This sets the “terms, criteria, and repertoires that racialize
neoliberalism’s benefciaries as worthy multicultural global citizens and its losers
as doomed by their own monoculturalism, deviance, infexibility, criminality, and
other attributes deemed antisocial,” in other words doomed by their own self-
imposed distance from the inherent “good” of the capitalist system.46 This set of
rhetorical maneuvers enables the global monoculturalism of dominant systems to
continue under the guise of supposedly “free” multiculturalism.
To explicate the efects of neoliberal multiculturalism in the university, Melamed
cites Aihwa Ong’s important book Neoliberalism as Exception. Ong identifes in the
neoliberal university a

double movement in American higher education—a shift from the national

to a transnational space for producing knowledgeable subjects, and a shift
from a focus on political liberalism and multicultural diversity at home to one
on neoliberalism and borderless entrepreneurial subjects abroad.

The operations of higher education are one arm of the many tentacled operations
of neoliberalism “used to exert a monopoly of rationality over the practices that
impact its constitution,” producing in turn a “diferentiated citizenship” that repro-
duces power hierarchies on a global scale.47
The “ofcial antiracisms” that Melamed identifes together work to bolster
white supremacy and “naturalize the privileges of those who beneft from present
socioeconomic arrangements,” as they serve to “make the dispossession of those
cut of from wealth and institutional power appear fair.”48 In turn, “ofcial antira-
cisms have fatally limited the possibility of overcoming racism to the mechanisms
of US-led global capitalism, even as they have enabled a new kind of normal-
izing and rationalizing violence.”49 The efects of these ofcial antiracist orders
are cumulative. All three of the periods outlined in Melamed’s book are still with
us, sedimented in policies and practice both within and outside of educational
apparatuses. We may be living in the third era of Melamed’s periodization, but
the tropes associated with each of the three continue to characterize humanistic
Another random document with
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 – Igen és ő lezuhant. De mondd csak, miért meséled ezt nekem?
– Azt hittem… nem… nem tudom.
– Nos?
– De hiszen majd meggyógyul hamarosan. Akkor megint minden
jó lesz.
– Hát persze.
Szünet.
Mintha kigunyolt volna. Hirtelen elmosolyodott:
– Te nagyon különös ember vagy! Megteszed ezt a hosszu utat
és ezután itten üldögélsz.
– Óh, már megszoktam. Lefekvésig itt töltöm az időt.
– Nem félsz?
Tréfálkozása visszaadta önbizalmamat és bátorságot öntött
belém. Szilárd talajt éreztem a lábam alatt.
– Szeretném megtanulni a félelmet.
– A félelmet? Ugylátszik, te is olvastad azt a mesét.
– Igen, meglehet, hogy olvastam valamelyik könyvben.
Megint szünet.
– Miért nem akarsz beállni hozzánk?
– Nem nekem való – feleltem –, most összeálltam valakivel és
együtt nekiindulunk a nagyvilágnak.
– Hová mentek?
– Azt még nem tudom. Keletre vagy nyugatra. Csak ugy
vándorolunk.
Szünet.
 – Kár… – mondta végre halkan. – Azt hiszem, hogy nem jól
teszed… Mit is mondtál az elébb, hogy van Erik? Azért jöttem, hogy
megkérdezzem.
– Beteg és bizony nagyon rossz bőrben van szegény feje, de…
– A doktor azt hiszi, hogy fölgyógyul?
– Igen, legalább nem mondta az ellenkezőjét.
– Jó éjszakát!
Istenem, ha fiatal, gazdag, szép, hires és bölcs volnék… Ott
megy Erzsébet!…
Mikor a temetőből kifordultam, megtaláltam az ökölalaku
pipámhoz szükséges körömszeget. Zsebrevágtam. Egyideig még
álldogáltam, néztem jobbra meg balra, hallgatóztam…, de semmi
sem mozdult. Senki sem kiáltotta: „Az az enyém!“
 XII.

Falkenberg meg én utnak eredtünk. Este van, hüvös a levegő és

az égboltozaton lassan kigyulladnak a csillagok. Rábeszélem
bajtársamat, hogy menjünk a temetőn keresztül. Bolond fejjel azt
hiszem, hogy talán megpillanthatok egy kivilágitott ablakot a pap
házán. Hej, ha gazdag, szép és ügyes volnék…
Néhány órája cipeltük már sulyos batyunkat, még nem ismertük
egymást teljesen és beszélgetni is tudtunk. Az első boltot csakhamar
magunk mögött hagytuk és nemsokára elhagytuk a másikat is.
Csakhamar fölmeredt előttünk az éjszakai égen a szomszéd község
templomtornya. Régi szokásom szerint a temető felé igyekeztem.
Bajtársamhoz fordultam:
– Talán megpihennénk itt valahol?
– Helyes – felelte Falkenberg –, ilyenkor már minden pajta tele
van puha szénával. És ha elkergetnek, kimegyünk az erdőbe, ott
még melegebb van.
Ő volt a vezetőnk.
Jól megtermett, izmos férfi volt, ugy 30 körül, bajusza hosszan
csüngött le a szájaszélén. Felsőtestét kissé előregörbitette járás
közben. Inkább keveset beszélt, mint sokat, a munka csakugy égett
a kezei alatt, néha pedig még énekelt is szép férfias hangján.
Nagyon szép nótákat tudott. Egészbevéve más ember volt, mint
Grindhusen. Ha meg-megszólalt, tröndi, valdresi2) és svéd szavakat
kevert a beszédébe, ugyhogy nem lehetett megtudni, hová való.
Megérkeztünk a szélső házhoz. Az emberek még ébren voltak és
a kutyák ugatni kezdtek. Falkenberg a gazdát kérte, mire egy
fiatalember jött ki a házból.
– Van-e valami munka számunkra?
– Nincs.
– De hiszen a kerités kőfala félig leomlott. Talán kijavithatnók.
– Nem szükséges. Most ősszel ugy sincs egyéb munka, majd mi
magunk javitjuk ki.
– Adhat-e éjjeli szállást?
– Sajnos…
– Talán a pajtában?…
– Nem lehet. Ott alusznak a cselédek.
– Hitvány fickó – morogta bajuszába Falkenberg, mikor
odébbmentünk.
Keresztülmentünk egy kis erdőcskén és fekvőhelyet kerestünk.
– Talán gyerünk vissza. A lányok nem fognak kidobni bennünket.
Falkenberg gondolkozott.
– A kutyák ugatnának – mondta azután.
Egy rétre jutottunk, ahol két ló legelészett. Az egyiknek a
nyakában csengő csilingelt.
– No ez ugyan derék gazda – vélte Falkenberg – a lovai a réten
éjszakáznak, a szolgák meg a pajtában alszanak. Tudod mit,
tréfáljuk meg egy kicsit. Menjünk egy darabig lóháton.
Megfogta a csengetyüs lovat, füvel és mohával betömte a
csengőt és fölült. Az én lovam vadabb volt, de végül mégis
fölkapaszkodtam rá.
Egyideig a réten lovagoltunk, aztán kikocogtunk az országutra.
Az én gyapjutakaróimat használtuk nyeregnek, de kantárunk nem
volt. Mégis nagyszerüen ment a dolog. Körülbelül egy mérföldet
lovagoltunk, mikor a szomszéd faluhoz értünk. Hirtelen hangokat
hallottunk magunk előtt az uton.
– Na, most galoppozzunk egy kicsit – szólt hátra Falkenberg.
Ugylátszik, nem volt nagy mester a lovaglásban. Először csak a
csengőszijba kapaszkodott, később lefeküdt és görcsösen átkarolta
a ló nyakát. Egyszerre csak megpillantom az egyik lábát, amint az
ég felé mered. Rögtön utána le is pottyant.
Szerencsére nem fenyegetett semmi veszély. Csak egy fiatal pár
enyelgett a kertek alatt, azoknak a hangját hallottuk.
Vagy egy félórát poroszkáltunk tovább. Már minden tagunk fájt.
Óvatosan lemásztunk és hazakergettük a lovakat. Markunkba
nevettünk, örültünk a jól sikerült tréfának és az apostolok lován
folytattuk utunkat.
– Gágá, gágá – hallatszott a távolból. Ismertem ezt a hangot,
vadkacsák voltak. Gyermekkoromban ugy tanultam, hogy ilyenkor
meg kell állni, össze kell kulcsolni a kezet, nehogy a vadkacsák
megijedjenek. Miután nincs sietős dolgom, most is ezt teszem. Lágy,
misztikus hangulat szálldos körülöttem, visszafojtom lélekzetemet és
fölbámulok az égre. Ott repülnek… Az ég, mint valami csillagokkal
vegyitett tenger nyugszik fölöttünk. Gágá, gágá, hangzik ujból a
fejünk fölött, és a pompás menet lassan eluszik az éjszakában…
Végre találunk egy pajtát. Minden csöndes, lefekszünk és
alszunk néhány órát. Olyan mélyen aludtunk, hogy a cselédek reggel
alva találtak mindkettőnket.
Falkenberg a gazdával akart beszélni, fölajánlotta, hogy
megfizetjük a szállást. Tegnap olyan későn érkeztünk, hogy már
mindenki aludt és nem akartuk fölzavarni őket. Nem vagyunk
csavargó tolvajok. De a gazda nem akarta elfogadni a fizetséget.
Még meg is vendégeltetett a konyhában egy csupor kávéval, de
munkát nem tudott adni. A termés be van takaritva és most neki meg
a legénynek nincs egyéb dolga, mint hogy kijavitsák a keritéseket.
 XIII.

Három napja kószáltunk már és nem kaptunk semmi munkát, sőt

mindenhol megfizettették velünk a szállást, meg az ételt, italt, ugy
hogy napról-napra szegényebbek lettünk.
– Te, hiszen már nincsen pénzünk. Igy nem jutunk tovább –
mondta Falkenberg és azt tanácsolta, hogy próbálkozzunk meg a
lopással.
Meghánytuk-vetettük ezt a tervet, végül is elhatároztuk, hogy
ezzel még várunk egyideig. Az evés miatt nem volt gondunk, hiszen
baromfi akadt elég a falukban, de készpénzre is szükségünk volt
ahhoz, hogy továbbjussunk. Ha munkával nem tudunk keresni, majd
szerzünk másképen. Nem vagyunk angyalok.
– Én bizony nem vagyok angyal – mondta Falkenberg. – Ezek a
legjobb ruháim. Más még munkaruhának se igen használná. Magam
mosom a patakban és megvárom, amig megszárad. Ha elszakad,
megfoltozom, ha pedig pénzem van, ujat veszek. Bizony igy van ez.
– De a fiatal Erik azt mondta, hogy eliszod a pénzed.
– Az a zöldfülü… Hát persze, hogy iszom. Unalmas dolog, ha az
ember mindig csak eszik… Gyere, keressünk egy házat, ahol
zongora van.
Igy gondolkodtam: olyan házban, ahol zongora van, bizonyára
jómódu emberek lesznek s ugylátszik, Falkenberg ott akarja
elkezdeni a lopást.
Délután találtunk ilyen házat. Mielőtt bementünk, Falkenberg
fölvette az én jobbik ruhámat és vállamra akasztotta az ő hátizsákját
is, hogy annál szabadabban mozoghasson. Habozás nélkül ment föl
a kőlépcsőn, egy ideig bent maradt és amikor kijött, azt mondta,
hogy megbizták a zongora hangolásával.
– Micsoda?
– Hallgass! – parancsolta – hangoltam én már zongorát, ha nem
is kötöm mindenkinek az orrára.
És amikor láttam, hogy egy hangvillát huz elő a hátizsákból,
tudtam, hogy komolyan beszél.
Meghagyta, hogy maradjak a közelben, amig ő a zongorával
foglalatoskodik.
Föl- és lekószáltam tehát és néha, ha a ház délre nyiló ablakai
előtt elsétáltam, hallottam, amint Falkenberg a zongorát gyötri
odabent. Rendes hangot nem tudott leütni, de vigyázott, hogy ha
meghuz egy hurt, éppen annyira visszaengedje, amennyire
fölcsavarta. A zongora ettől csöppet sem lett rosszabb, mint amilyen
volt és nagyszerüen ment minden.
Beszédbe elegyedtem az egyik szolgalegénnyel, egy fiatal fiuval.
Kétszáz korona volt az évi bére, no meg az ellátás. Reggel félhétkor
kelt, megetette a lovakat, de aratásidőben már ötkor talpon kell lenni.
Nyolckor aztán vége a munkának. Egészséges volt és
megelégedetten élt kis világában. Még most is emlékszem gyönyörü
hibátlan fogsorára, meg a mosolyára, amikor egy lányról beszélt.
Aranyszives ezüstgyürüt ajándékozott neki a minap.
– Mit mondott, amikor odaadtad a gyürüt?
– Meg volt lepve, képzelheted.
– És mit mondtál te?
– Hogy én mit mondtam? Nem tudom. Azt mondtam: hordd
egészséggel, vagy ilyesvalamit. Még egy ruháravalóval is meg
akartam ajándékozni, de…
– Fiatal?
 – Olyan a hangja, mint egy szájharmónikáé, olyan fiatal.
– Hol lakik?
– Azt nem mondom meg, mert akkor a falu szájára kerül.
Ugy álltam előtte, mint egy Nagy Sándor és lenéztem az ő kis
világára. Amikor elváltunk, megajándékoztam a gyapjutakaróval, azt
mondtam, ugyis nehéz, nem tudom cipelni.
– Ez a kislányé lesz – mondta ragyogó szemmel –, legalább lesz
egy meleg takarója.
És Nagy Sándor csöndesen megjegyezte:
– Ha nem volnék az, aki vagyok, szeretnék a te bőrödben lenni…
Mikor Falkenberg elkészült a munkájával és kijött, olyan finoman
mozgott és olyan válogatott kifejezéseket használt, hogy alig
értettem meg a szavát. A házikisasszony kisérte ki.
– Most a szomszédfaluba megyünk – mondta –, bizonyára ott is
lesz hangolni való zongora. Isten önnel, kisasszony, Isten önnel.
– Hat korona, fiam – sugta a fülembe –, meg a szomszédházban
is hat, az tizenkettő.
Ezzel utnak eredtünk. A hátizsákokat én cipeltem.
 XIV.

Falkenberg ugy számitott, hogy a szomszéd sem akar majd

hátramaradni és bizonyosan föl fogja hangoltatni a zongoráját. És
csakugyan… A házikisasszony valami kiránduláson volt és a szülők
elhatározták, hogy meglepik. Ugyis panaszkodott már, hogy nem
lehet játszani az ócska szerszámon.
Megint egyedül maradtam, Falkenberg eltünt a házban. Mikor
beesteledett, világot gyujtottak neki és ő tovább dolgozott. Odabent
ette meg a vacsoráját is. Vacsora után kijött és a pipáját kérte.
– Milyen pipát?
– Te buta. Azt az öklöset.
Nem szivesen adtam oda mestermüvemet, amely nemrég készült
el teljes pompájában.
– Ne melegitsd föl nagyon a szöget – aggodalmaskodtam –,
különben elhajlik.
Falkenberg rágyujtott és nagybüszkén visszasétált a házba. De
azért rólam is gondoskodott. Enni és innivalót kért a konyhában
számomra.
Fekvőhelyet kerestem a pajtában.
Éjszaka egyszerre csak fölébredtem. Falkenberg ott állt a pajta
közepén és a nevemet kiáltotta. Telihold volt és az ezüstös fényben
tisztán láttam barátom arcát.
– No, mi van?
 – Itt a pipád.
– A pipa?
– Az ördögbe is, igen. Nesze, visszaadom. Nézd, a szög lejön
róla.
Visszaadta a pipát. Láttam, hogy a szög egészen elhajlott.
– Szinte megfenyegetett az ököl – mondta Falkenberg – és
eszembe jutott, hol szerezted a körmöt.
Boldog Falkenberg!…
Mikor másnap reggel utra készültünk, megérkezett a
házikisasszony. Hallottuk, amint dörömbölni kezd a zongorán. Valami
valcert játszott. Nemsokára azután megjelent az ajtóban.
– Hát persze, egészen máskép szól. Nagyon hálás vagyok érte.
– Tehát meg van elégedve? – kérdezte a mester.
– De mennyire.
– És mit tanácsol, hova menjek most?
– Ővrebőbe, Falkenbergékhez.
– Kikhez?
– Falkenbergékhez. Csak mindig egyenesen előre ezen az uton.
Körülbelül másfélórányira egy oszlopot fog találni, ott forduljon be
jobbkéz felé.
Erre Falkenberg leült a lépcsőre és kikérdezte a kisasszonyt az
ővrebői Falkenbergék felől. Talán rokonai, s akkor ugyszólván otthon
lesz náluk. Nagyon megköszönte, hogy a kisasszony ilyen nagy
szivességet tett neki.
Utnak eredtünk. A hátizsákokat én cipeltem.
Mikor az erdőbe értünk, letelepedtünk és meghánytuk-vetettük a
dolgot. Vajjon tanácsos lesz-e mint zongorahangolónak megjelennie
előkelő rokonánál, az ővrebői kapitánynál. Tulajdonképen csak én
aggodalmaskodtam és ezzel megzavartam Falkenberget is.
– De hiszen nagyon kedélyes dolog lesz – vélekedett.
– Nincs valami papirosod, vagy igazolványod, amin rajta van a
neved is?
– De van, hanem az ördög vigye el, az áll rajta, hogy szorgalmas
munkás vagyok.
Egy darabig tanakodtunk, hogy meghamisitsuk-e ezt a
bizonyitványt, vagy pedig egy egészen ujat irjunk. Ez azután egy
zongorahangolónak szólna és a Lars nevet átváltoztatnók Lipótra.
– Meg tudod te irni ezt a bizonyitványt?
– Óh, hogyne.
De most már azután elragadott a fantáziám és ezzel elrontottam
mindent. Zongorahangoló az kevés lesz, irjuk, hogy mechanikus,
egy zseni, aki a legsulyosabb föladatokat is megoldja és gyára van.
– Egy gyártulajdonosnak nincsenek igazolványai – vélte
Falkenberg és hallani sem akart róla.
– Nem, ez mégsem megy…
Rosszkedvüen ballagtunk tovább és elértük az oszlopot.
– Nem akarsz befordulni? – kérdeztem.
– Eridj te magad – dühösködött Falkenberg. – Nesze, itt vannak a
ruháid.
De amint az oszlopot szerencsésen magunk mögött hagytuk,
meglassitotta lépteit. Elkeseredetten mormogta:
– Mégis csak borzasztó, hogy semmi se lesz belőle. Milyen jó
aratásunk volna.
 – Azt hiszem, meg kell látogatnod őket – vélekedtem –, hiszen
lehet, hogy nem is vagytok rokonok.
– Kár, hogy nem tudom, van-e neki egy unokaöccse Amerikában.
– De hiszen te nem is tudsz angolul.
– Ugyan – mordult rám –, fogd be a szád. Semmi közöm a te
fantáziádhoz.
Ideges és dühös volt. Ugy kilépett, hogy alig birtam lépést tartani
vele. Hirtelen megállt.
– Mégis bemegyek. Add ide még egyszer a pipádat. Nem fogok
rágyujtani. – Fölmásztunk a dombra. Falkenberg tudatában volt
fontosságának, mutogatott a pipával és véleményt mondott a ház
fekvéséről. Bosszankodtam nagyképüségén, meg azon, hogy velem
cipelteti a hátizsákját. Megkérdeztem:
– Hát mégis zongorahangoló vagy?
– Ugy hiszem, már bebizonyitottam, hogy értek hozzá – felelte
kurtán.
– De tegyük föl, hogy a háziasszony is ért hozzá és rögtön
azután kipróbálja a zongorát, mi lesz akkor?
Falkenberg hallgatott. Láttam, hogy a fejét töri. Lassanként
összebicsaklott, meggörbült háttal ment tovább.
– Talán mégsem lesz tanácsos. Nesze, itt a pipád. Gyerünk csak
be és kérdezzük meg szokás szerint, talán akad valami munka.
 XV.

Ugy adódott, hogy amint az udvarra beléptünk, máris akadt

valami. Éppen egy uj zászlórudat akartak fölállitani, de nem volt elég
ember. Odamentünk, hozzáláttunk és segitettünk. Az oszlop
csakhamar a helyén volt. Az ablakokból mindenfelől női fejek
kandikáltak ki.
– A kapitány ur itthon van?
– Nincs.
– Hát a nagyságos asszony?
A kapitányné kijött, magas, szőke asszony volt, barátságosan
viszonozta köszöntésünket.
– Csak azt akartuk megkérdezni, van-e valami munka.
– Nem tudom – felelte –, de nem hiszem. A férjem nincs idehaza.
Ugy láttam, hogy nehéz szivvel utasit el bennünket és már
nyultam is a sapkám után, nehogy zavarba hozzuk. De, ugy látszik,
Falkenberg, aki rendesen volt fölöltözve és a csomagját is mással
cipeltette, fölkeltette a figyelmét. Odafordult hozzá:
– Milyen munka?
– Mindenféle – felelte Falkenberg. – Keritéseket csinálunk, árkot
ásunk, kőmüvesmunkát végzünk.
– No, ahhoz már egy kicsit későn van –, vélte az egyik férfi a
zászlórud mellől.
 – Ugy van – mondta az asszony is –, de talán jöjjenek be és
egyenek valamit. Ami nekünk van, az jut maguknak is.
– Köszönjük szépen – felelte Falkenberg.
Bosszankodtam ezen az alázatos válaszon. Vajjon mit fognak
gondolni rólunk. Itt közbe kell lépnem. Levettem a sapkámat és
előkelő meghajlással franciául mondtam:
– Ezer köszönet, asszonyom, ön nagyon szeretetreméltó.
Megfordult és rámnézett. Szinte komikus volt a csodálkozása.
Azután bevezettek bennünket a konyhába és nagyszerü ebédet
kaptunk. Az asszony eltünt, de mikor elkészültünk az evéssel és
menni készültünk, megint megjelent. Falkenberg vérszemet kapott,
ki akarta használni barátságosságát és megkérdezte, hogy
fölhangolhatja-e a zongorát.
– Hát ahhoz is ért? – kérdezte és a szemei karikára nyiltak a
csodálkozástól.
– Igen. A szomszéd falukban is hangoltam néhány zongorát.
– De nekem egy elsőrangu zongorám van és nem szeretném,
ha…
– Kérem, egészen nyugodt lehet.
– Van valami…
– Nem, nincs igazolványom, mert sohasem volt szükségem rá.
De hiszen nagyságos asszonyom ott lehet, amikor dolgozom.
– Hát persze, persze.
Előrement és Falkenberg követte. Az ajtórésen láttam, hogy a
szoba fala tele van képekkel.
A cselédlányok a konyhában sürögtek-forogtak és néha lopva
egy-egy pillantást vetettek felém. Egyikük nagyon csinos volt,
örültem, hogy reggel megborotválkoztam.
 Elmult tiz perc. Hallottam, hogy barátom hozzáfogott a
hangoláshoz. A kapitányné kijött a szobából.
– Maga franciául is beszél? Ez több, mint amennyit én tudok.
Hál’ Istennek, akkor nem kell többet beszélnem. Néhány frázison
tul az én tudományom sem terjedt.
– Barátja megmutatta a bizonyitványait, ugy tetszik, mind a
ketten derék emberek. Nem tudom… talán sürgönyöznék a
férjemnek és megkérdezném, itt tarthatom-e magukat.
Szerettem volna megköszönni szivességét, de egy szó sem jött
ki a torkomon, csak nagyokat nyeltem.
Neuraszténia!
A délutánt elcsavarogtam az udvaron és a földeken. A gazdaság
a legpéldásabb rendben volt. Minden be volt takaritva, sehol semmi
munka a mi számunkra. Ugy látszik, a kapitány gazdag ember.
Beesteledett és Falkenberg még mindig a zongorával
foglalatoskodott. Némi élelmiszert vettem magamhoz a hátizsákból
és elmentem az udvarból, nehogy vacsorával is megkináljanak. A
hold sütött, a csillagok ragyogtak és én élvezettel mentem egyre
beljebb az erdőbe. A legsötétebb helyen leültem. Milyen csend van
mindenütt, földön és égen. És itt meleg van, bár a földeket már
belepi a dér. Néha megzizzen egy füszál, egy egérke surran, a fák
koronái fölött eluszik egy vércse… azután megint elcsendesül
minden…
Láttál már valaha életedben ilyen szőkeséget?… Nem, még
soha. És milyen gyönyörü az alakja, kicsattanó piros a szája. Mintha
mindig fények rezegnének a hajábán. Hej, ha most egy gyémánt
fejéket vehetnék elő a hátizsákból és neki ajándékozhatnám…
Keresek egy rózsaszin kagylót, abból csinálom meg a körmöt és
odaadom neki pipámat a férje számára. Igen, ez lesz a legjobb.
Falkenberget az udvaron találom. Sietve sugja a fülembe:
 – Már megjött a férje válasza. Fát kell vágnunk az erdőben.
Értesz hozzá?
– Igen.
– Akkor menj a konyhába. Már kérdezősködött utánad.
Mikor beléptem, felém fordult:
– Hát maga hol csavargott, kérem, jöjjön vacsorázni… Már evett?
Hol?
– Van nálunk ennivaló.
– Óh, de hiszen van itt is. Nem akar egy kis teát?… Nem?…
Megjött a férjem válasza. Ért a favágáshoz?… No akkor jó. Nézze, itt
a sürgöny: „Két favágóra van szükségünk. Péter jelölje ki nekik a
levágandó törzseket“.
Édes istenem! Szorosan mellettem állott, amikor a sürgönyt
mutatta. Valami finom, szüzi illat lebegett körülötte.
 XVI.

Az erdőben vagyunk. Péter, az egyik béres mutatta az utat.

Amikor megbeszéltük a helyzetünket, Falkenberg egy csöppet
sem volt hálás, hogy az asszony itt tartott bennünket.
Nem is kell hálálkodnunk – mondta –, hiszen szükségük van
ránk.
Falkenberg egyébként még annyit sem értett a favágáshoz, mint
a zongorahangoláshoz. Én valahol csavargásaim közben ezt a
mesterséget is megtanultam és igy kényszerüségből vezettem a
munkát. Ebbe természetesen ő beleegyezett. Egy uj ötlet
foglalkoztatott.
A közönséges favágásnál az ember a földre fekszik és oldalról
ferdén fürészel. Ezért végeznek aztán olyan keveset egy nap és
ezért marad a lefürészelt fatönk bent a földben. Egy tengelyes
szerkezettel, amit a törzs tövébe csavarna az ember, ugy lehetne
fürészelni, hogy a fürész vizszintesen vágná a fát és igy nem
maradna vissza semmi tönk, csak a gyökerek. Hozzáláttam, hogy
papirra vessem ennek a szerkezetnek a részeit. Legtovább törtem a
fejemet azon a rugón, amelynek a szükséges nyomást kell
szolgáltatnia. De talán egy sulyt lehetne tenni a rugó helyére. Ezzel
azonban baj van, mert ez a suly mindig egyenletes nyomást fejtene
ki. Pedig mennél mélyebbre hatolt a fürész, annál jobban gyöngülnie
kellene ennek a nyomásnak. A rugó viszont engedne, ha a fürész
már mélyebben volna. Elhatároztam tehát, hogy mégis inkább
rugóval próbálkozom. Majd meglátod, sikerülni fog, biztattam
magamat, és ez lesz életem legnagyobb dicsősége.
 A napok teltek, a napok multak. Már kilenc fát ledöntöttünk és
levagdostuk a galyakat. Az ellátás bőséges volt. Reggel magunkkal
vittük a hideg ebédet és este kaptunk meleget. Ha hazaértünk,
megmosakodtunk és kitisztálkodtunk, hogy jobb legyen a külsőnk,
mint a férficselédeké, azután bementünk a konyhába és leültünk az
asztalhoz. Még három lány volt rajtunk kivül, és én észrevettem,
hogy Falkenberg és Emma között gyöngéd szálak szövődnek.
Néha zongoraszó hangzott a belső szobából és a gyöngébb
hangok kiömlötték a konyhába is. Néha kijött a kapitányné, finom,
lányos szépségével derüt hozott magával és barátságos
beszélgetésbe elegyedett velünk.
– No, mi volt ma az erdőben – kérdezte néha –, láttatok medvét?
Egyik este pedig megköszönte Falkenbergnek, hogy fölhangolta
a zongoráját.
Hogyan? Hát mégis?… Falkenberg viharverte ábrázata szinte
megszépült az örömtől és én büszke voltam rá, mikor szerényen
felelte:
– Igen, én is ugy éreztem, hogy sikerült.
Vagy a gyakorlat tanitotta meg tényleg néhány fogásra, vagy
pedig a kapitányné egyszerüen hálás volt neki, hogy nem tette
teljesen tönkre a hangszert.
Esténként Falkenberg fölhuzta az én nadrágomat. Most már nem
kérhettem vissza tőle, hogy magam viseljem, mert mindenki azt
hihette volna, hogy én kölcsönöztem ki tőle.
– Megtarthatod a ruhákat, ha átengeded nekem Emmát –
mondtam tréfásan.
– Jó, hóditsd meg – felelte.
Láttam, hogy egy kicsit elhidegedtek egymástól. Falkenberg is
szerelmes volt, akárcsak én. Milyen javithatatlan álmodozók vagyunk
mi ketten!
 – Mit gondolsz, ma este is ki fog jönni a konyhába? – kérdezte
néha favágás közben.
És én vállat vontam:
– Mennél tovább elmarad a kapitány, annál jobb.
– Ugy van – felelte a barátom –, te, ha meghallom, hogy nem jól
bánik vele, baj lesz.
Egy este Falkenberg énekelni kezdett. Megint büszke voltam rá.
A nagyságos asszony kijött és megismételtette vele a dalt. Azután
még egyet énekelt. Érces hangja betöltötte a konyhát és a
kapitányné nem tudott hova lenni a nagy csodálkozástól.
– No, ilyet még nem hallottam.
S ekkor fölébredt bennem az irigység.
– Tanult ön énekelni? – kérdezte az asszony –, ismeri a
hangjegyeket?
– Igen – felelte a barátom –, egy dalárdában énekeltem.
Én azonban ugy véltem, hogy ezt kellett volna felelnie: Nem,
sajnos, nem tanultam.
– Énekelt már valaki előtt, aki értett hozzá?
– Igen, néha egy-egy táncmulatságon énekeltem és egyszer egy
esküvőn is.
– De hozzáértő előtt még nem?
– Nem, ugy hiszem, még nem. Talán…
– Kérem, énekeljen még valamit.
És Falkenberg énekelt.
Még megérem, hogy a nagyságos asszony egy este behivja a
szobába és kisérni fogja a zongorán, gondoltam magamban. De
hangosan ezt mondtam:
 – Bocsánatot kérek, mikor jön haza a kapitány ur?
– Nemsokára – felelte az asszony –, miért kérdi?
– A munka miatt.
– Már minden megjegyzett fát kivágtatok?
– Nem, még nem mind, de… óh, még nagyon sok van hátra,
de…
– Nos… – kérdezte. Azután, ugy látszik, eszébe jutott valami –:
ha a fizetés miatt gondolja, akkor…
Fölemelkedtem és igy szóltam:
– Igen, ha lehetséges…
Falkenberg egy szót sem szólt.
– No, csak mondja ki bátran. Tessék, fogja – mondta és felém
nyujtotta azt az összeget, amit kértem. – És ön?
– Köszönöm, én nem kérek semmit – felelte Falkenberg.
Istenem, milyen kicsi lettem egyszerre, legjobb szerettem volna
elsülyedni. Ez a Falkenberg lefőzött. Annyi pénze van, hogy nem kell
neki előleg? Még ma este lehuzom róla a jó ruháimat és darabokra
szaggatom.
De természetesen nem tettem meg.