Speaking Back to Academic Colonial Gatekeeping: The Significance of Intercultural Performance Studies Works in Promoting Marginalized Knowledges and Identities

ABSTRACT

Despite the “critical” turn in the intercultural communication field, dominant scholarship produced in the field still relies on White/Western frameworks, resulting to the dismissal of marginalized knowledge and identities. In this autoethnographic essay, I use my lived experience as a transnational Black African scholar to demonstrate how intercultural performative works can serve as critical decolonial scholarship to subvert “colonial gatekeeping” and (re)centre marginalized identities and knowledge at the core of the communication discipline. In so doing, my lived experience serves as strategic tool to advocate for resistance to the colonization of identities and works of marginalized scholars.

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural communication
• performance studies
• marginalized
• decolonization
• knowledge

Acknowledgment

Dr. Pindi wishes to extend thanks to Dr. Andrew Spieldenner and Dr. Elvis Nshom for their feedback and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gloria Nziba Pindi

Gloria Nziba Pindi (PhD, Southern Illinois University Carbondale) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at California State University San Marcos. Her research lies in the area of critical intercultural communication, Black feminisms, autoethnographic/ethnographic methods and performance of the self in transnational context. Her scholarship focuses on African immigrants’ process of identity negotiation in diasporic context with a critical approach to diversity and social justice.