University of Oklahoma Graduate College

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE TRANSVERSING OUR BORDERS: DECOLONIZING COMMUNICATION THEORY A DISSERTATION SUBMITED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By STERLIN LEDREW MOSLEY Norman, Oklahoma 2015 TRANSVERSING OUR BORDERS: DECOLONIZING COMMUNICATION THEORY A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION BY ___________________________ Dr. Clemencia Rodriguez, Chair ___________________________ Dr. Eric Kramer ___________________________ Dr. Lupe Davidson ___________________________ Dr. James Olufowote ___________________________ Dr. Catherine John ©Copyright STERLIN LEDREW MOSLEY 2015 All Rights Reserved. Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………1 Shifts Exploring Another Way Research Motivation Gaps in Intercultural Scholarship Chapter I: Literature Review ………………………………………………..13 Fragmented Meaning Romanticism and Idealism Existentialism and Post-Modernism Marxism, Critical Theory and The Frankfurt School Feminist Theory Postcolonial Theory Edward Said and Orientalism Homi Bhaba and Colonial Discourse Analysis Gayarti Spivak and Postcolonial Reflexivity African and Afro-Caribbean Postcolonialism Sylvia Wynter Edouard Glissant Paul Gilroy Lewis Gordon Patricia Hill Collins, Afrocentrism and Afro-Idealism Chapter II: Research and Methodology……………………………………66 Research Questions The Paradox of Postcolonial Theory Building Methodology Reflexive Scholarship and Spiritual Activism Traditional Rhetorical Analysis in the Postcolonial Tradition Musa Dube’s Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation Ruben Muñoz-Larrondo and Postcolonial Interpretation Lidan Lin’s Analysis of J.M. Coetzee Postcolonial Rhetorical Analysis and Reflexivity Decolonizing Truth and Validity The Data Research Focus Transversal Theory Building in the tradition of the Mestiza Avoiding Afrocentric Analysis Themes Knowledge Identity Time and Space Time Space Reality Empathic Reflexivity and Shapeshifting iv Chapter III: Negotiating Communication Borders…………………………109 Part I: Malidoma Somé Gloria Anzaldúa Knowledge Western Knowledge Dagara Knowledge Dagara Spiritual Technologies Esoteric Knowledge Emotional Knowledge Knowledge, Spiritual Technology and Secrecy “Supernatural” Knowledge Holism and Knowledge Real and Imagined Knowledge Dagara Knowledge Preservation Western and Non-Western Knowledge Tensions Literacy and the Death of Indigenous Knowledge Skepticism, Fear and Knowledge Breaching Western Epistemic Walls Synthesizing Knowledges Communication and Dagara Knowledge Communication and Hierarchical Western Knowledge Holism, Knowledge and Dagara Communication Secrecy, Knowledge and the Liminal in Dagara Communication Identity Identity and the Body Identitive Borders Identity, Dissociation and the Body Dagara Identity and Bodily Identification Pathologizing Identities Integrating Ancestral Identities Between Dagara and Western Identity The Nature of Western Ego Identification The Nature of Dagara Ego Identification Identity Dissolution, Anxiety and the Underworld Dagara Identity and Initiation Circular Identity Identity and Communication Dagara Identity and Western Communication Identity, The Unconscious and Dagara Communication Communicating as an Alien Part II……………………………………………………………..215 Time and Space Time v Time as a Historical Trope New Western Conceptions of Time Space Defining Space Dagara Time/Space Dagara Time, Grandparents and Grandchildren Children and Wisdom Western Time and Rigidity Spatial Boundary Dissolution Reintegrating Space Connectedness Shapeshifting Communication and Dagara Time/Space Reality Western Reality From Idealistic to Materialistic Reality The Hegemony of Reality Pathologizing Non-Consensual Reality The Colonialization of Normality Dagara Imagination and Manifestation Melding Reality and Imagination Intention, Meaning and Dagara Reality The Kontombili Dagara Language and Magic Learning to See Reality and Communication Shifting Reality and Communication Aperspectival Reality and Communication Chapter IV: Transversal Communication……………………………………290 Western Models of Communication Ruth Finnegan and Multiple Modes of Communication Expanding Beyond the Dialectic Healing the Problem of Communication Conocimiento Transversal Communication Model Reality in Western Model Knowledge in Western Model Time/Space in Western Model Identity in Western Model Reality in Transversal Model Knowledge in Transversal Model Time/Space in Transversal Model Idenetity in Transversal Model The Liminal Spaces Transversal Communication Bibliography……………………………………………………………………327 vi List of Figures Figure A: Western Communication Model………………………………...302 Figure B: Transversal Communication Model……………………………..312 Figure C: Transversal Communication Model (Simplified)……………….313 Figure D: Transversal Communication Process……………………………321 vii Abstract This dissertation explores the limitations of western communication models through analyzing the western colonial philosophical assumptions which underlie theories of communication. The themes of knowledge, reality, identity, and time and space will be analyzed through the postcolonial lenses of anthropologist Malidoma Somé and Latina feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldúa in an effort to understand these themes from the lens of the non-hegemonic “other”. Through the epistemological and ontological restructuring of the western tropes of knowledge, reality, identity, time and space this dissertation argues for an alternative model of communication “transversal communication” which positions the process of communication outside the binary assumptions of western philosophy in order to legitimize non-western or “othered” epistemologies and ontologies. viii INTRODUCTION The Intelligent man quickly realizes the impotence of gold. –Hafiz Shifts After an hour and a half of class we were released for a fifteen-minute break from the lecture on research procedures. I had been longingly staring outside, as it was a beautiful spring day and the blooms from the Bradford pear trees blew effortlessly across the small patch of grass outside the window of our dungeon like classroom. I rose from my section of the table and made my way outside to a lone bench that overlooked the concrete sidewalk. I sat for a moment, the strange meat-like smell of the Bradford pear trees mingled with fresh cut lawn and dust, simply staring at nothing in the distance across the sprawling campus. All at once I became aware of a vastness, as though a massive cavern of nothing had opened inside the entirety of my body. At first there was a sense of anxiety. Was I having a panic attack? Was my blood sugar too low? Was I hurt? However, soon all thoughts stopped completely and as I looked around my eyes started to fill with huge glassy tears. Not tears of sadness or exhaustion, but tears of an indescribable bliss. However, my ability to name what was happening to me vanished, and all that remained was awareness, emotion and sensation. No thoughts. No rationalizations. I became aware all at once that the Latina girl walking down the sidewalk, the young White fraternity boy behind her, the grass under my feet, the bench I was apparently sitting on, and the sky above me were inseparable from “me,” Sterlin 1 Mosley, a Black male, 28 year old 2ND year PhD student. I literally could not distinguish between their borders and my own. There was only vastness, connection and bliss. Staring at the girl I felt as though I was seeing from her eye…and the boy behind her, I can feel his stride on the concrete just as surely as I felt the clouds apparently above me moving through fluidly due to a soft western wind. The grass, graciously sitting under what I thought were “my” feet, sat silently watching us all from below. But how could my feet and the boy’s feet be the same? How could I be both the grass and the sky? How could I be both Sterlin and nothing all at once? The tears continued to stream down my face and a euphoric, almost maniacal smile flashed across my mouth. At that moment there was nothing else, but a knowing of a weave I had only intellectually claimed to understand. I sat (or I should say we sat) there for perhaps ten minutes (although this “break” seemed to go on for hours) until finally we were startlingly interrupted by a classmate (who was also me) that tentatively popped her head outside to tell me class was resuming. Seeing the tears on my face she politely asked me if I was okay. I nodded, with what must have looked like a silly grin, and slowly regained awareness of my individuated body and mind. As I stood up and made my way back inside the building an oppressive sadness fell upon me unlike any I had ever experienced. Anger, disappointment and confusion welled up inside the space that had been utterly empty and free as I became aware again painful separation. This was the return of. The return of fragmentation. My section of the table, my chair, my bag and notebook all stared back at me with cold dissociation, waiting for me to fall back into the familiar fold of ordered “ordinary” life. An avid scholar of mystical texts I knew that what I had 2 experienced was real, just as real as the cold table and the hard chair. However the explanation of it (of which even these words cannot begin to describe) would always elude me, taunt me with a vapid inadequacy and elicit blank stares or cock-eyed suspicion. I knew that as I tried to recount the experience the apparent separateness between me and the other would make words grossly insufficient, but having grown up in Norman,

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