Transnational Research Collectives as “Constellations of Co-Resistance”: Counterstorytelling, Interweaving Struggles, and Decolonial Love

Abstract

Settler colonialism and coloniality dominate and dismember the truths, the bodies, and the lands of the colonized. Decolonization and decoloniality involve intergenerational, embodied, and emplaced pathways of resistance, rehumanization, healing, and transformation. In this article, we uplift the healing and transformative power of transnational stories and embodied knowledges that are rooted in four research collectives: the Palestinian Resilience Research Collective (PRRC) in the West Bank; the Mapuche Equipo Colaborativo para la Investigación de la Resiliencia (MECIR) in Chile; the Community Action Team (CAT) in Boston, USA; and the Miya Community Research Collective (MCRC) in Assam, Northeast India. We, the co-authors of this article, are directly connected to these four research collectives. Across our collectives, we work to defend the right to exist, to belong, and to express our full range of humanity as racialized and colonized communities in distinct, yet connected, sites of struggle. Our transnational focus of this article is premised on a fundamental rejection of borders, even as we recognize the material and psychosocial realities of borders. In co-writing this article, we bring decolonial solidarity into life through “constellations of co-resistance,” a concept used by Indigenous scholars such as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson to describe complex connective fabrics across decolonial struggles. We share our reflections on three practices of decolonial solidarity that shine through each of our transnational research collectives as three constellations of co-resistance: counterstorytelling, interweaving struggles, and decolonial love.