Researcher Highlights
Co-creating knowledges to decolonise democracy, political subjectivity and the academy

Associate Professor Sara C. Motta is a proud mestiza salvaje of Colombia Chibcha, Polish Jewish and Celtic lineages. She develops decolonising methodologies and emancipatory pedagogies to co-create critique of the violences and exclusions of raced and feminised subjects and communities in the current realities of patriarchal capitalist-coloniality, and to co-weave other forms of decolonising and feminised forms of democracy, economy, politics, political subjectivity and education.

Associate Professor Sara C. Motta’s is committed to working with communities/kin across territories and lands to co-create knowledges that in process and outcome can contribute to decolonising, dignified, restorative and reparative pathways of well-being and justice. Her work foregrounds the epistemological wisdoms and knowledges of raced and feminised communities and subjects and centres their embodied struggles to share how these wisdoms and practices can offer pathways for re-imagining in holistic and caring ways politics, democracy, economy, and knowledge systems.

“My scholarly practice has always been about working with raced and feminised working class and ‘poor’ communities who are struggling over the right to have access and control of their lives and the decisions impacting their lives.”

Sara has found that, while not always visible and often actively invisibilised, women—grandmothers, mothers, aunties—are often at the forefront of these political and epistemological struggles. This experience is also one that Sara shares, and it was in coming together with her/these communities that they have nurtured political voice through healing justice practices.

“When it became increasingly obvious that their/our struggle was not being made visible, I began to work explicitly with the feminisation of resistance and the political, in understanding what kinds of ethics, practices and relationships were being developed. I also wanted to know how the feminisation of democracy intersects with decolonisation and motherhood.”

Decolonising an unfixable system

Sara’s work highlights a clear ongoing and systematic disparity in the voices that are represented, listened to and taken seriously across the political landscape. And when it comes to overhauling political frameworks embedded in extractivist and possessive models of social relationships, her work also suggests that more-than human-centred and inclusive forms of politics are needed if we are going to see real change take place in our lifetimes.

“How can these systems be more humanising and connecting? We are at a critical junction in the history of the West and I hope my—and our—voices can contribute to nurturing more diverse, alternative pathways for our communities.”

Sara explains that creating new forms of politics and economies would require an entirely new and holistic approach: a shifting of debates, ideas, subjects and practices about what constitutes knowledges, reason, democracy, economy and politics.

“We need new forms of democracy, new subjects and places of democracy and new ways of creating knowledge about democracy that are participatory, place-based, and involve new languages of the political—inclusive of spiritual knowledges, ancestral knowledges and cultural practices.”

Sara is committed to using research methodologies that are collaborative and co-created, that prioritise ongoing dialogue with communities. Her writings include prose, poetry, analysis and case studies, all of which tell a story and make her work more accessible. While it can sometimes be difficult for a researcher’s work to break out of academic circles and reach communities and practitioners, this is exactly what makes Sara’s work so distinct: her writing is relevant, personal and deeply meaningful for individuals and communities.

“Groups of women of colour have started reading groups about my writings, particularly my latest book, Liminal Subjects: Weaving (Our) Liberation. This book shares the stories of women in movement in the Americas, Europe and Australasia, exploring a decolonising and feminised politics of liberation. Mothers have written to me, telling me about how reading my words enabled them to find a place of recognition and safety.”

Navigating damaging power dynamics

In her research with communities that are fostering new forms of politics, economy and democracy, Sara looks at how the current organisation of power and authority is based in a particular understanding of what knowledge is, who is a holder of knowledge (or an expert) and how we create knowledge which systematically devalues and invisibilises the knowledges of raced and feminised communities. Communities’ struggles, visions and practices actively involve a clear counter-politics of knowledge. This has taken her work in a new, albeit complementary, direction.

“The trajectory of my work has moved from understanding and conceptualising new forms of politics and democracy, to exploring the politics of knowledge of movements. That is, who has a right to create knowledge, to determine what knowledge is and how can we democratise the process of knowledge creation?”

As a researcher, Sara is acutely aware of her own responsibility as a knowledge holder, and works diligently to avoid perpetuating existing, damaging conceptual frameworks which misrepresent and reproduce coloniality.

“As my research matured, I realised that many of the dominant forms of being an academic and researcher involve logics of power, in which the scholar is considered the ‘knower’ and the subject is the ‘known’.

“I began to understand how the politics of knowledge and the responsibility of ‘becoming academic’ differently were at the heart of the transformational politics that I was engaging with as a scholar—and often as a sister and community member.”

To help break down established power roles and hierarchies within research—and recognise the agency of ‘marginalised’ communities — Sara prioritises research co-creation and has co-produced concepts and practices that can be used by communities both within and outside the traditional structure of formal education.

“I don’t shy away from what is right and from researching in disruptive, innovative and challenging ways. I want to break such logics of extractivism and separation, through working with critical intimacy, decolonising critique, and decolonising participatory action research.

“I also remain deeply committed to continuing to co-produce knowledge that is transformational in process and outcome, which allows for diversity, difference and multiple ways of life to flourish.”

A voice in and of the darkness

Sara’s work is inherently personal, inspired by her own experiences of inequity, exclusion and violence as a raced woman, and the similar experiences of others. Over her career as a researcher, Sara continues to come up against institutionalised and invisible barriers that serve to remind her of the importance and continued relevance of her work.

“My research focuses on people, knowledge and ways of being and knowing that have historically been devalued, denied and denigrated—and this has meant that my entire research trajectory has been met with obstacles.

“Some people ask, “how could a brown, single mother be a scholar and a knower?” I overcome these barriers as my ancestors did: with deep connection, responsibility to my communities and finding my inner wisdoms. Through this journey of scholarship and being an activist-scholar, I have begun to find my own voice and reconnect back to ancestors and deep time.”

Just like it did for her, research embedded in responsibility to community and healing justice has enabled Sara to support the facilitation of processes for women and feminised and racialised communities to nurture their voice and inner strength, and to start a process of healing from past wounds caused by oppressive and extractive systems.

“When I look back over my work, I can see there has always been a focus on how individuals and communities can find their voice, agency and be at the centre of transforming their lives in democratic, feminising and decolonising ways.

“My hope is that this trajectory of scholarly practice contributes to subjects and communities who have felt unheard and unseen to come to a place of mutual recognition and to find tools that can be of use in their own practice of healing transformation.”