The Erotic, the Speculative, and the Surreal: Considering the Spiritual as a Site of (Modal) Knowledge Cultivation through the lens of a Queer Black Feminist Radical Imagination

Abstract

This thesis is an exploration of what it may mean to respond to the decolonial question, and the murky ontological and epistemological waters such a response may take us in to. I make the case that modern movements towards freedom and liberation are, by virtue of epistemicide, based in scientific materialism, the belief that only the physical world exists. This is often seen as a common-sense belief to hold, however, instead I argue that recognising the existence of more than the physical world, and thus building a concept to begin discussing the impact of a possible spiritual world, is indispensable to social movements that are working towards liberation and freedom. That it is only with access to a realm of knowledge that is “non-rationalist” (Lorde, 2013c), knowledge of the spiritual, that we can move closer towards our freedom dreams. The thesis is organised into two sections; the first section offers a contextualisation, review, and analysis of the key questions and theories of this work. The foundational claim I make is to locate the spiritual as a possible site of (modal) knowledge cultivation, this is achieved through weaving through decolonial theory, Black feminist thought, and the philosophical study of modality. Then, the latter section identifies three examples of how we might read the spiritual as a form of (modal) knowledge cultivation and those are; the erotic, speculative fiction, and surrealism. I take a decolonial, poststructuralist, Black feminist, and queer theory informed approach to this research. Methodologically, I offer a critique to the process of method and methodology and recentre a ‘life-affirming approach’ to research (Sheik, 2023) which here borrows lessons from autoethnography, though expands this approach to research.