Can I Speak, When and How? Colonization, Subalternity, and Contested Practice

Anchored in the work of Fanon (1952), Mbembe (2019), andSpivak (1988), I take an autoethnographic journey that traces colonization and the subtle forces of coercion that exist in the academy and society, particularly in the US.I draw on Holland et al. (1998) to position myself in a figured world, a unique constellatory network of histories, relationships, geographies, and more.Through this autoethnographic account, I describe my role as a music teacher, one who seeks a transgressive pathway in the fragile territory of a new awareness of diversity that continues to perpetuate subtle epistemic violence.I locate my work as "situated knowledge" within the geographies of marginalization, from the colonized world to prisons.