Intimate Pedagogy: Visual Explorations of Race and the Erotic

This project looks at what centering intimacy in learning can bring to racial justice and decolonial practices. The site of study is the shared colonial histories and knowledges between the Caribbean and Canada. It asks: can an intimate pedagogy help us transgress divisionary boundaries to produce transformative outcomes of accountability to ourselves, each other, and the planet? To explore this question, I draw on Caribbean and Black feminisms, queer theory, and decolonial feminist scholarship, including Indigenous feminism and ecofeminist critique. Audre Lordes (1984) theory of the erotic is a foundational pillar in defining an intimate pedagogical practice. Using visual methods, I look at the work of visual artists to study the intangible matters of intimacy that escape language in how we understand learning and knowledge. Through three case studies, that include interviews with three artistsMichle Pearson Clarke (Toronto), Annalee Davis (Barbados), and Nadia Huggins (St. Vincent)and autoethnographic narratives and photographs, I consider how theory, the visual and sensorial, and embodiments of knowledge impact how we learn together and create change. Through the work of Davis I explore how ghostly colonial matters held in the land can teach us about reparative learning in post/decolonial life. I then offer a queer Caribbean reading of the sea as a space of instability through the work of Huggins to find examples of transformative healing and learning. Finally, questioning my own body as a white researcher, I look at the potential learning offered through resistance and refusals of intimacy through the work of Clarke. I conclude with an interrogation of the human/non-human divide to argue for a relational framing to social justice. The principal contribution of this research is the introduction of the concept of intimate pedagogy. I define intimate pedagogy as the learning that happens with others in intimate moments, but also the learning that comes from the relationship we have with ourselves and the intimacy we create with knowledge. Intimate pedagogy prioritizes the understanding of relational life and opens sites for different transformative possibilities with others. It offers a tool to transcend disciplinary and interpersonal boundaries in studies of race and decoloniality.