Reactivating Exiled Capacities (REC)

Exiled Capacities are dispositions or sensibilities that have been exiled from the (collective) body by the systems of modernity we live in. For example, the capacity to be present to the complex reality of things - the beautiful, the ugly, the broken and the messed up within and around us, as opposed to escaping what is difficult, painful or disgusting or being attached to idealized versions of reality and of ourselves. Or, the capacity to enact visceral accountability and put oneself in service without needing to be remembered for that service; this requires the disposition to face responsibilities without excuse, doing what is needed even if it goes against one's self-interest. 

This exile permeates:

• The psycho-affective body
• The nervous system
• The collective onto-epistemic body
• The socio-political structures that shape us

To reactivate these capacities is not to return to an idealized past, but to listen differently and to move towards repair with integrity

At its core, REC is an invitation to practice capacities for relationality. It asks the question: How have we been trained to numb ourselves to the costs of our comfort? What we call “personal choice” or “individual freedom” often relies on unseen relational debts—harm displaced onto other bodies, other lands, other times.

Reactivating exiled capacities requires practices that extend beyond intellectual comprehension. We invite a form of knowing that is not just cognitive, but meta-epistemic—one that recognizes partiality, contradiction, and the limits of human understanding. This means holding space for multiple truths, even when they appear contradictory, and listening beyond words. This means recognizing that sensory, embodied, and ancestral knowledge are not in opposition to scientific or conceptual frameworks, but in conversation with them.In a sense, reactivating these exiled capacities is like tending to a relationship over time: it deepens and gains nuance as we tend to it. Most of these capacities live in the embodied layers of our existence, in how we respond to complexity, and in how we care for the entangled web of life we are part of. REC is one attempt among many to support this reactivation, a modest contribution to a larger field of efforts seeking to interrupt the patterns of separability that sustain harm. 

In order to engage with this pedagogy through a responsible lens, it is important to relate to language as proxy. Since reactivating these capacities is not an informational problem, this has profound implications for how we relate to verbal language. Here, language becomes a proxy for senses and sensibilities—not as fixed concepts, but closer to frequencies.

Take English as an example: it is a language shaped by separability and binaries. In its conventional use, English often captures only the form of an experience, failing to translate its movement or vibrational essence. To disrupt this capture of form, we try to use language flexibly, avoiding rigidity or freezing meaning.

As you move through this text and the REC invitations, you will encounter different proxy-languages—words that attempt to approximate the vibrational field we seek to nurture. Yet, it is crucial to release the expectation that these proxy-languages serve as encyclopedic agents. The words are not definitions; they are invitations.

Don’t read this like an academic paper; read it like you would listen to music, or feel a shift in temperature. Let language move: Let it stretch, blur, and shift. This is an invitation to let meaning hover at the edges of sensation.

In the following text you will encounter maps that point to limitations in the way we conceptualize and embody certain theories and practices. Engaging with this content requires a meta-critical awareness into rethinking critique itself—not as a distant act of judgment, but as a practice of relational accountability. In modernity, critique often positions the critic as separate from what they critique, reinforcing purity politics and disconnection. But we are not outside of the systems we critique. We are entangled within them. Meta-criticality asks: to what extent am I reproducing what I critique? How can critique become a practice of collective accountability rather than separation?