Writing in subjugated knowledges: towards a transformative agenda in nursing research and practice

[I]t is from those who have suffered the sentence of history — subjugation, domination, diaspora, displacement — that we learn our most enduring lessons for living and thinking ( 1, 172). Many of us look back at the twentieth century as a time of unprecedented movement of people around the globe. Yet, postcolonial scholars keep reminding us of centuries of colonization, diaspora, and exploitation. Countries such as Canada, colonized by European settlers, discouraged the permanent settlement of non-Europeans brought in to build the railways and farm the land. Exclusionary immigration policies meant that while some groups were ‘used’ as workers, they were not welcome as settlers; they had no voice in the construction of nation, or in the social production of knowledge. Canada was not alone in its preference for White settlers. Australia also had a White immigration policy. By the late twentieth century, racialized immigration policies in Canada gave way to policies meant to be non-discriminatory on the basis of ‘race’. Asia, Central and South America, the Caribbean and Africa, became major source countries of immigrants and refugees. Canada has been enriched by the talents of these newcomers. Yet, some groups, especially women, remain disadvantaged and underserved. Many face economic hardships and are forced into low paying jobs. They work long hours, balance paid work with housework and childcare, and do not have opportunities for language training and reskilling. Many live with chronic illnesses. The hardships of everyday life take their toll on health. With few exceptions, however, nursing scholarship has excluded the voices and standpoints of these women. We have also been slow to examine, critically, how gender, racialization, class, and history intersect to shape socio-political-economic realities and health. Instead, we have tended to couch the issues immigrant women face in terms of their ‘culture’. Although ‘culture’ is a relevant concept, we have, in the past, slipped into treating this concept as factual and static, running the risk of essentializing and categorizing people. If nurses are to address the issues in women’s lives, the construction of knowledge from the standpoints of those who, in Homi Bhabha’s words, ‘have suffered the sentence of history’, is urgent. Furthermore, we need analytic perspectives that help us to put, in context, women’s life experiences; we cannot overlook the historical circumstances that have shaped everyday realities. Let me stress that I am not suggesting doing research to appropriate women’s voices and knowledge for the sole purpose of enriching nursing scholarship. Rather, an infusion of subjugated knowledges 11 I draw on the notion of subjugated knowledges as this has been used by Michel 2, 82): ‘a whole set of knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated …[I]t is through the re-appearance of this knowledge … that criticism performs its work’. into the theories we draw on in practice is necessary if we are to fulfill our mandate within pluralistic societies — a mandate, I believe, that must embrace equity and social justice for all. A decade ago I joined other scholars in calling for a feminist epistemology in nursing research. This perspective has served some scholars; yet, speaking as a racialized woman, this discourse does not resonate with my life experiences. Western feminism has privileged gender relations, and given cursory attention to the impact of racialization, and class. It is now time to chart a new course for the twenty-first century, where intersectionalities can be explored and understood. I believe that a postcolonial feminist perspective promises a more inclusive nursing scholarship. It would give voice to racialized women who have been silenced, and provide the analytic lens to examine how politics and history have variously positioned us, and shaped our lives, knowledges, opportunities, and choices. A postcolonial feminist perspective also has the analytic power to illuminate how ‘cultural facts’ are socially constructed and produced. New insights will mean deconstructing and rewriting taken-for-granted ‘knowledge’, and redefining relations of power and privilege — one small step forward in a transformative agenda that embraces equity and social justice in the construction of knowledge for nursing practice in the twenty-first century.

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