Abstract
This paper looks to the perspectives of Black feminisms, decolonial thought, and esoterism to develop practices of relational witnessing that upend our liberal humanist framings of religion and spirituality. Relational witnessing evinces ethical, and perhaps, strategically risky opportunities to listen to and affirm the resistant liveliness of those rendered subaltern. This concept of witnessing also contributes to an ontology of interconnectivity and the common towards collective liberation and flourishing. The main question that grounds this paper is: how do we develop witnessing practices that heed the otherwise and metaphysical to instantiate a pluriversal imaginary outside the persistent Regime of Man? Throughout this autoethnographic and reflective treatise, I describe the worldmaking practices of activist-scholars, including my own, within the archive of the otherwise, to better apprehend our social condition and to transform it. This paper also foregrounds the “homeplaces” of activist-scholars from the margins, or sites of creative vitalism.
Presenters
Anthony Cruz PantojasHumanist Chaplain, Central Administration, Tufts University, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2025 Special Focus—Fragile Meanings: Vulnerability in the Study of Religions and Spirituality
KEYWORDS
WITNESSING, SPIRITUALITY, LIBERATION, VITALISM, ESOTERISM
