“Honoring Indigenous Ethico-Onto-Epistemologies across (K)new Materialist, Posthumanist, and Postqualitative Inquiry”

Book Chapter:

“Honoring Indigenous Ethico-Onto-Epistemologies across (K)new Materialist, Posthumanist, and Postqualitative Inquiry.” Qualitative Inquiry in the Present Tense: Writing a New History, edited by Norman K. Denzin and Michael D. Giardina, Routledge, 2024, pp. 77-92.

Abstract:

Given the interrelation of colonial history, environmental degradation, and the unsustainable neoliberal model of global capitalism, I submit that Western researchers have a responsibility to support alternatives to extractive and anthropocentric research models by holding space for, and respectfully engaging with, the work of several generations of Indigenous scholars who have articulated truly radical eco-critical approaches to the crucial questions raised by the relatively recent new materialism/posthumanism/postqualitative paradigm shift. While its proponents have effectively mobilized affect theory, neuroscience, and quantum physics to advance non-anthropocentric conceptions of agency, their claim to doing something “new” fails to acknowledge Indigenous ethico-onto-epistemologies that have a particularly long history of valuing other/more-than-human agency.