About Reactivating Exiled Capacities Project

Anchored in the teachings of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) collective, this project explores how colonialism manifests not only in geopolitical systems and historical injustices but also in intimate, molecular, and embodied ways.

In education, we often assume that if people knew the truth about [x], they would change their behavior. But our current crisis is not one of ignorance—it is one of unconscious denial. When these denials are confronted, they are often met with anger and defensiveness, because they threaten our sense of identity, safety, and control.

To work through these collective denials, we must engage not just intellectually but emotionally, relationally, and systemically, addressing the very forces that uphold and reward them.

In the GTDF Collective we propose that at its core, colonialism is not merely a historical or political event but an ongoing condition that permeates every aspect of our existence, from the way we think and feel to how we relate to each other and the broader living systems we are part of. We understand colonialism as an insidious neuro-biological dis-ease: the disease of separability.

Separability refers to the artificial and illusory division imposed by colonial modernity between humans and nature, the ‘self’ and other, and between living and ‘non-living’ beings. This division is not merely a philosophical or theoretical concept; it has material, molecular, and embodied effects on how we live, think, and relate. We call it molecular colonialism to suggest that this separability operates at a metabolic level by seeping into our neurophysiology, shaping our desires, fears, forming a deep-rooted denial of our entanglement with land that fosters systems of commodification and control. This separability is not just about political, spatial, or even temporal boundaries; it taps into the internalized psycho-affective loops that create hierarchies of value between species, cultures, and individuals, sustaining a society where the intrinsic worth of life is replaced by relentless commodification, exploitation, and the pursuit of dominance.

Chief Ninawa Huni Kui, an Indigenous leader of the Huni Kui people of the Amazon, and a co-researcher in our collective, describes this condition as a "metabolic dis-ease"—a fundamental neurophysical impairment of our ability to engage with the world in a relational and responsible way. 

One way to conceptualize this metabolic dis-ease of separability is to see it as a fracture in our sense of identity that creates a wound that leaves us feeling insecure and compels us to seek superiority as a means to placate the feeling of insecurity. 

The demand for superiority manifests in what we witness as cultural supremacy. For example patterns of authority that seek to dominate, or a demand for arbitration that insists on hierarchy; a desire for autonomy denies interdependence and accountability; an affirmation that craves validation; appropriation that takes without reciprocating; accumulation that hoards; and acceleration that perpetuates the myth of progress as endless forward motion. 

Within this framework, cultural supremacy emerges not merely as a misperception of others, but as misperception of the self that has been distorted and shaped by cultural norms that reward and normalize the inflation of a separate self. It is not solely the product of cognitive biases but is also structured libidinally and neurophysiological wired.

Re-wiring these libidinal attachments is essential if we are to imagine and be otherwise. This work is not just about knowledge—it is about relational practices that help us feel, metabolize, and move with the complexity of our entanglements.

This process of reorientation is not passive waiting; it’s active practice—a commitment to moving at the speed of repair rather than the speed of reaction. It requires conditions where collective attunement amplifies what is needed, not just what is urgent, and where our actions align with the rhythms of justice and care.