On Not Knowing: COVID-19 and Decolonizing Leisure Research

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has enfolded waves of uncertainty—intense doses of not knowing—into our daily experience. In this commentary, I stutter into the discomfort of not knowing as a mode of relation. Recognizing that the collective uncertainty surrounding the pandemic has marshaled vital desires to know how to respond, to cope, and even to survive, I think and write toward productive possibilities that arise when we tune attention away from knowing more and knowing better. The journey I take hitches to conceptual anchor points from settler colonial studies, and to moments of personal upheaval associated with both the current pandemic and learning to take responsibility for settler colonization. As I navigate this route of not knowing, I churn up potential decolonizing pathways for leisure researchers to debate, discard, pick up, or move through.

Keywords:

• Decolonization
• learning
• not knowing
• settler colonialism
• uncertainty COVID-19