Getting Close to Other Others: Doing Difference Differently

This essay expands on my uses of the central concept of Sara Ahmed’s seminal work, Postcolonial Encounters, in a participatory theater-based research project with a cohort of women from different countries in West Africa ‘On their Way’ through the asylum/migration nexus in the Republic of Ireland. I situate asylum- seeking (and asylum-giving) in white nations as a fourth encounter between the West and the rest, and examine the shifting conditions in which encounters between the other, and ‘other others' take place. Part 1 of the paper provides a background to my research project and asylum-seeking in the Irish context. In Part 2, I outline my use of the ‘encounters’ method to make decolonial interventions across theory, epistemology and methodology. Part Three analyses a devised theatrical scene to illustrate how the women re-stage the past and present, disrupt relations of power, proximity and distance, and speak back to what has been said or known about them. I conclude with a discussion of ‘making theory from the flesh’ to distinguish specific forms of Black female agency and resistance and outline my current practice-based applications of Ahmed’s work in Australia.