“[This] system was not made for [you]:” A case for decolonial Scientia

Abstract

Background: Sylvia Wynter's "recoded" form of science called decolonial Scientia (DS) is grounded in an understanding of humans as simultaneously biological and cultural. DS includes narrative interventions that destabilize Western scientific authority, and address limitations that empirical data collection and analysis place on capturing simultaneous realities. Therefore, Wynter's narrative "languaging" is both scientific critique and grounded in a tradition of Black radical imagining. Aims: In this article, I use languaging to destabilize the canonical narrative tied to W. M. Cobb's production of the article "Race and Runners." The standard telling focuses on Cobb's examination of Owens' lower extremities to expose the fallacy of racial differences in athletic ability. Destabilization of the narrative allows for identifying relational complexities between actors involved in the canonical storyand identifying ideologies embedded within it that guide our deconstructions of biological race. My alter(ed)native subjectivity informs my use of languaging to argue that the relationship between narrative and research practices belie Western scientific/unscientific binaries. Materials and methods: Audiovisual and documentary sources of the public-facing "Race and Runners" story were subject to comparative analysis to verify the content and order of events in the canonical narrative. Letters focused on race and athletic ability obtained from the W. Montague Cobb Manuscript Collection at Howard University serve as "apocryphal" sources of information. Correspondence between Cobb and a representative member of the public named Howard Duncan took place within a period immediately before, during and after Cobb publishes "Race and Runners" in the Journal of Health and Physical Education. Contents were subject to a systematic

Sketchbook archaeology: Bodies multiple and the archives they create

“…Rather, data are essentially fungible objects, which are defined by their portability and their prospective usefulness as evidence. ” The tenacity with which these entities can move, black-boxed across generations, demonstrate how standard practices and sources become naturalized and simply common sense (Agarwal, 2012; Geller, 2017; Watkins, 2021).…”

“…As metaphor, however, the cancer(s) I performed were shifted to an alternative space, apart from the scientific form in their ledgers. This was not simply a rhetorical move, but a new separation practice: “language is not something distinct from practices, but it is also done in practices” (Bertoni, 2012: 79, note 8; see also Ingold, 2011: 181–195; Watkins, 2021).…”

“…Since this time, bioarchaeologists have been busy drawing social theory into their work (e.g., Agarwal and Glencross, 2011; Baadsgaard et al, 2017; Cheverko et al, 2020; Crandall and Martin, 2014; Geller, 2021; Gowland and Knüsel, 2006; Watkins, 2021), along with other documents and material sources (e.g., Hosek and Robb, 2019; Hosek et al, 2021; Lans, 2021; Mant and Holland, 2016; Mant et al, 2021; Mitchell, 2017; Novak, 2020; Perry, 2007; Roberts, 2011; Watkins and Muller, 2015). For many bioarchaeologists, and like their archaeologist counterparts, there is a clear sense that these things are not part of the osteological record.…”

The constraints of racialization: How classification and valuation hinder scientific research on human variation

“…This experience is aptly described by Du Bois's concept of double consciousness: “this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others” (Du Bois, 1903). Such experiences allow marginalized scientists to transcend certain limitations experienced by those who can only see the world from the perspective of dominant identities (Bolnick et al, 2019; Claw et al, 2018; Collins, 2002, 2015; Moreton‐Robinson, 2013; Smith & Bolnick, 2019; Tsosie et al, 2020; Watkins, 2020). Consequently, these individuals are able to hold both paradigms at once and elucidate the incommensurabilities that are solved by a new paradigm (Benn Torres, 2014; Nelson, 2020a; Nelson, 2020b).…”

William Montague Cobb: Near the African diasporic origins of activist and biocultural anthropology

“…These were not reduced to nature, but manipulated by human actors who could themselves be changed by laws and custom. Cobb's viewpoint reflects the historical transdisciplinarity of Black intellectual and cultural production, generated within and outside of resistance (McKittrick, 2015, p. 160; Mignolo, 2015; Watkins, 2021). African diasporic scientific critique is a part of the Black radical tradition of imagining and implementing humanity beyond Western epistemes (Kelly, 2002; McKittrick, 2011).…”