Artistic Imagination and Social Imaginaries–Polysemous Readings of Historical Travelling Accounts

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752) investigates the history and legacy of colonialism by gathering researchers, artists, and activists to read medieval traveling accounts together. The chosen texts document a period when European theologians, missionaries, and merchants encountered peoples and lands that were new to them and show an early Western impetus toward Eurocentric scientistic universalism regarding materiality, the environment, and embodiment (Pratt 2008; Carter 2023; Jennings 2017).

This Special Issue stems from a series of transdisciplinary symposia organized under the Praxis of Social Imaginaries project (2023–2027). Here, artistic research methods and works, combined with action- and community-based research, aim to reinterpret the meanings of these accounts for the present. Our research community comprises individuals from diverse scholarly and artistic backgrounds, specializing in both indigenous and traditional knowledge practices, as well as experiences of inclusion and exclusion. We also represent a variety of cultural backgrounds, ages, and situated knowledge practices, which have informed our collaborative processes of experimental sessions and community learning.

We pose questions such as the following: What can be learned from descriptions of encounters with “the Other” and unknown lands, creatures, and places? How can we engage with the minority or silenced voices in these colonial accounts? What role can various artistic practices play in reimagining different worlds and retelling “lost” stories?

Through these polysemous readings, we aim to investigate new and innovative ways for past narratives to support the acknowledgement of present-day power imbalances.

Background

The theoretical and methodological context of this Special Issue can be understood as a threefold cord where history, art, and indigenous and traditional epistemologies are intertwined. Firstly, we build on the work of Geraldine Heng, who argues that race and racism in the medieval period were formed along religious and cultural lines before the formation of epidermal characteristics. Additionally, Willie James Jennings states that a theological social imaginary, formed through encounters between those who stood at the center of the establishments of medieval institutions and those at the borders of that world, created “racial optics” and global extractive exploitation practices (Heng 2018; Jennings 2010; Carter 2008). Our project returns to foundational texts from this period to learn from the past, understand the present, and inspire future changes.

The chosen travel accounts of this project document a period when the medieval Christian cosmology, which focused on reading the world polysemously, evolved into a universalizing theoretical and dogmatic structure, from which the social imaginary of Western university sciences emerged (Mignolo 2021; Liboiron 2021; Harrison 2001).

In this Special Issue, we explore our encounters with several key texts:

• William of Rubruck: Itinerarium fratris Willielmi de Rubruquis de ordine fratrum Minorum (1253);
• Marco Polo’s Travels (1300);
• Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1357–1371);
• Ibn Khaldun’s travels in Africa, found in The Muqaddimah (1377);
• Bartolomé de las Casas: A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542).

In addition to the historical texts, artistic practices and creating a dialog with the arts are essential to our work. Kathryn Dickason’s (2023) recent work shows that the artwork accompanying some of these travel accounts, and the depictions of artistic practices within them, entangle stories of dance with extreme forms of otherization, evoking subhumanity. Many authors argue that dance has the capacity to revolt against colonial authorities, opening important inquiries into how different arts and otherization practices are entangled.

We also build on the work of the medievalists Sheeta Chaganti (2011) and Carol Symes (2023), who urge scholars to consider the gap between what is visible on manuscript pages and what might have been visible or audible in the past. They ask, “What is the relationship between what was written down and what was really going on?” (Symes 2011:33). Pioneering authors like Barbara A. Holmes (2017) and Saidiya Hartman (2008; 2022) suggest that researchers must look beyond written records to ethically give voice to oppressed people.

Holmes suggests that there is always an available language, “whether it is drum talk or the mumbled laments of the stricken”. Silence is a world in itself, and from this world of silence, speech learns to form itself in various ways. To retrieve lost legacies, we must return to the past to see what remains in the present. Often, something occurred in the past “so deep, so powerful, and so rich” that it affected the rest of the world (Holmes 2017:49). The arts can play a pivotal role in these investigations.

Our last and third point of view is raised by the scholars and practitioners in our community who have indigenous or traditional and situated knowledge perspectives to bring to the investigations. In contemporary research, decolonial methodologies offer alternative means of knowledge circulation, especially for researchers who are interested in alternative forms of inquiry. Popular frameworks include the following:

• Patricia Hill Collins: Situated Knowledge;
• Santos Boaventura: Epistemologies of the South;
• Linda Smith: Decolonizing Methodologies in Indigenous Research;
• Walter Mignolo and Katherine Walsh: Decoloniality.

These approaches, categorized as decolonial research methodologies, use methods such as the following:

• Taking everyday experiences, bodies, and social movements as text;
• Privileging storytelling and oral historicity;
• Granting epistemic justice to testimonials.

Our community values traditional forms of art and artistic research practices, as well as the embodied knowledge found in crafts, gardening, and cooking. We aim to explore the “cracks” in colonial power structures through art, storytelling, and the re-telling of historical accounts from new perspectives (Anzaldua 1987; Mignolo et al. 2018). This is what we call a polysemous reading practice based on artistic interventions.

We invite contributions to this Special Issue that align with some or all of the methods described above and address the following themes:

• Arts and Othering: Exploring how art has been used to depict and challenge the concept of “otherness”.
• Theology and Medieval Social Imaginaries: Investigating the role of theology in shaping medieval social perceptions and structures.
• Artistically Researching Practices of Encountering Others: Examining artistic methods for studying interactions between different cultures and peoples.
• Medieval Travel Accounts Re-visited/Re-interpreted: Re-examining medieval travel narratives to uncover new insights and perspectives.
• Landscapes and Mapping: Analyzing medieval and indigenous approaches to geography and cartography.
• Geography in Context: Studying the significance of crossings (sea, land, rivers) and landmarks in medieval geography.
• Hospitality and Ceremony: Exploring the customs and rituals of hospitality in medieval and indigenous societies.
• Rituals, Celebrations, and Festivities: Investigating the role of rituals and celebrations in movements between the medieval and today.
• Character through Clothing, Food, and Gesture: Understanding identities through their material culture and social practices in the medieval and today.
• Medieval Traveling based on the Senses: Delving into the sensory experiences of medieval travelers, including sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile impressions.

Dr. Laura Hellsten
Dr. Eduardo Abrantes
Guest Editors

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• colonialism
• artistic research
• medieval travel accounts
• practices of inclusion/exclusion
• decolonial methodologies
• social imaginaries
• transdisciplinary collaborations
• indigenous and traditional knowledge practices
• embodiment