Finding a community in plants: Reexamining the decolonial project of rehumanization with our nonhuman relatives.

This article at its core is about how struggles for liberation cannot be separate from nature. The human–nature binary is explored as a settler colonial, capitalist, White supremacist, and heteropatriarchal imperative to create a distance between human and nature (plants, animals, and land), as well as to designate degrees of humanness among people, especially among historically marginalized groups. This binary serves to justify and create shared conditions of oppression and breathlessness (Maldonado-Torres, 2016a) for humans and nonhumans alike. Further, rematriation is discussed as returning the land to the original stewards as well as correcting our relationships with nature from one of hierarchy, binaries, and othering to one of reciprocity, interdependence, and generosity (Hernandez, 2022; Kimmerer, 2013; Marya & Patel, 2021). In other words, rematriation work involves engaging in a decolonial attitude and decolonial modes of being (Maldonado-Torres, 2016a, 2017). To correct my own relationship with nature in alignment with the goals of rematriation, I discuss my efforts to listen to and learn from the teachings of plants, connect to my ancestral seeds, and reexamine approaches to the study of liberation in psychology. I also discuss approaches to reexamine the meaning of decolonization and build relationships with our plant relatives within my university community. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
Source: Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research