start

Quote:
(p.721)
“what global linear thinking and globalism did was precisely to outcast ways of knowing and knowledge that do not bend to Western European and North Atlantic epistemic regulations that now are resurging in diverse levels, spheres and areas of experience.”
(p.724) [specifically with history]
“With a kind of perverted logic, it turns its attention to the past of the colonized people and distorts it, disfigures it, and destroys it. This effort to demean history prior to colonization today takes on a dialectical significance. [Fanon quoted in Mignolo] We can also read ‘globalization’ instead of colonialism.”

Questions
What legitimizes or substitutes this ‘distorted, disfigured, and destroyed’ knowledge?

What are some examples of the history of the colonized people getting distorted, disfigured, and destroyed in today’s neoliberal world?

Connections
When thinking of examples for this coloniality of knowledge, Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism immediately came to mind. Said demonstrated how Western scholars and institutions constructed the 'Orient' not as an objective reality, but as a set of skewed representations designed to justify imperial control. By framing the East as irrational and stagnant, and the West as rational and progressive, colonial powers effectively managed historical knowledge to maintain their dominance. This perfectly illustrates how epistemic authority was weaponized to serve a political agenda

Reading this article also reminded me of Ken Liu’s short story “Tying Knots”. I remember someone brought up the example of algebra, which demonstrated how knowledge is conceptualized as a ‘Western’ thing. Something similar to this is Liu’s short story, in which an American researcher extracts the traditional knot-tying knowledge of an isolated village to solve a lucrative DNA sequencing problem. While the Western corporation profits immensely from this breakthrough, the community that originated the knowledge receives no reciprocity or recognition. I thought this served as a striking fictional parallel to how globalization and the coloniality of knowledge enforced this asymmetrical power dynamics.

Ken Liu's book. "Tying Knots was included in this book printed exclusively in Japan, but in English it seems to be included in The hidden Girl and Other Stories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_%28book%29

Reading: Silvia Federici. (2018). Witches, Witch Hunting, and Women. PM Press. 7-44.

Quote:
(p.29-30)

"But what capitalism reintegrated into the realm of acceptable female social behavior was a tamed, domesticated form of sexuality, instrumental to the reproduction of labor power and the pacification of the workforce. In capitalism, sex can exist but only as a productive force at the service of procreation and the regeneration of the waged/male worker and as a means of social appeasement and compensation for the misery of everyday existence."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_hunt

Why this quote?
Throughout my undergrad courses, I have looked at the state-sanctioned image of women. In my modern Middle Eastern history, I looked at the Turkish republican era's "modern woman" under the government of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In my modern Japanese history course, I looked at the Ryōsai kenbo (良妻賢母/ “good wife, wise mother”) image imposed by the Meiji government. In my post-war Canadian history class, I looked at the housewives in their single-family suburban houses. Hence, a quote capturing the beginning of this state-sanctioned manner for women, as society transitioned from feudal to capitalist, strongly resonated with me, and I wanted to give more thought to it.

Moreover, the point that such domestic sexuality served as a pacification of the male worker was something I never thought of, and really interested me. In my post-colonial Southeast Asia course, I learned that the most significant fracture in the Philippines anticolonial movement was the deep divide in social class, between the elite and peasants, which created a highly hierarchical society. In the context of colonialism, I believe one of the biggest difficulties for an anticolonial movement is the colonial collaborators. Although it is in a different context, I am strongly convinced that creating hierarchies within the domestic sphere must have been highly effective, and hence the quote strongly resonated with me. In that sense, the male workers in this scenario are like colonial collaborators, which are able to intimidate women, but they are both ultimately exploited by the capitalist system.

Questions

The Reproduction of Labour: How has this benefited the various powers and the capitalistic system?

The Pacification of the Male Worker: What are some other cases/contexts in which hierarchies are implemented so authorities can gain control?

Connections

Recently, I watched the documentary film Black Box Diaries, directed by Shori Ito. The film chronicled her multi-year fight for justice after she was sexually assaulted in 2015 by Noriyuki Yamaguchi, a high-profile media executive with close ties to former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. In one of the most pivotal moments in the documentary,
In May 2017, after the police inexplicably halted the arrest warrant for her attacker, Shiori Ito took the unprecedented step of holding a public press conference. In Japan, victims of sexual assault almost universally remain anonymous due to the intense social stigma, but Ito chose to show her face and use her real name. The backlash she faced during and after this press conference was immediate and vicious, centred entirely on the fact that she did not perform the role of the “perfect victim.”
This “perfect victim” is strongly connected to the capitalistic conceptualization of women. First, during the press conference, Ito wore a standard, professional black suit. However, because the top button of her shirt was undone, she was violently attacked online. Critics and internet trolls weaponized this tiny detail to label her a "honey trap" or a prostitute, arguing that a "real" victim would be dressed more conservatively. This mirrors the historical dynamic where a woman's physical presentation is heavily policed to determine her moral and legal worth. Secondly, the documentary highlights that Japanese society (much like other societies discussed earlier) expects women to be passive. As the film notes, society expects victims to act ashamed, cry, and remain silent. Ito, however, was composed, articulate, and assertive. Because she acted as an investigator demanding justice rather than a broken, weeping victim, society rejected her legitimacy. Finally, the film references this famous Japanese proverb, “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down,” to explain the backlash. By speaking out, Ito became a public threat to the established patriarchal order, particularly because her attacker had close ties to the Prime Minister. The subsequent smear campaign against her wasn’t just about discrediting her specific case. It was a societal mechanism designed to terrorize her into silence and serve as a warning to other women. It is a modern manifestation of the logic behind witch hunting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Box_Diaries

Reading: Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: Surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), 75-89.

Quote:
(p.82)
"If power was once identified with the ownership of the means of production, it is now identified with ownership of the means of behavioral modification."

Why this quote?
I think this quote is arguably the most important part of this article, because Zuboff argues that these tools of surveillance have fundamentally altered capitalism. It is pointing out a historical shift of the source of power from a traditional Marxist “means of production” to something automated, which has become much more invisible, invasive and ubiquitous. In traditional industrial capitalism, the “means of production” were physical: factories, land, and machinery. Marxist theory argued that this system created “false consciousness,” where the working class was blind to their own exploitation. However, Zuboff argues that “false consciousness” is no longer rooted in the hidden facts of class and production, but produced by the hidden mechanics of “commoditized behavior modification”, where we are unaware of how our daily habits are being shaped and sold.

Questions

How much can algorithms understand humans? How much can it factor in? (I feel like sometimes my algorithm gets it wrong or overgeneralizes, making weird suggestions.)

How can we tackle something that is automated and less tangible compared to traditional structures?

Connections
During intense periods of academic pressure, I often find myself doomscrolling as an escape from my workload. However, this desire for a mental release is quickly exploited by the very platform I turn to. As Zuboff points out, we rely on these tools to navigate the increasingly demanding “struggle for effective life”. Yet, rather than offering genuine decompression, the algorithm preys on this fatigue. I have noticed that after a certain amount of scrolling, my Instagram feed changes, pushing increasingly emotionally intense or shocking images, such as accidents, murder cases, and other tragedies. Noticing this recently changed my perspective on these kinds of technology because it revealed the unsettling intention of an intangible algorithm designed solely to keep my attention captive. The influx of tragic content illustrates what Zuboff terms “formal indifference”. To the system, the human suffering depicted in these videos carries no moral weight, and the real people impacted by these tragedies are entirely disregarded. Instead, their pain is stripped of its humanity and repurposed to trap me in a “lived experience of pure stimulus-response”. Recognizing this discouraged me from continuing, as it became clear that under surveillance capitalism, even our most visceral reactions to human tragedy are coldly commodified to extract more “data exhaust”.

Reading: Olufemi, L. (2025). Communism’s promise: The principle of transnationalism in feminist and black power organising in the United Kingdom. In L. Olufemi, F. Vergès, S. Federici, F. Petch, S. Lewis, V. Gago (…) (Eds.), Feminism for the world (pp. 37-49). Pluto Press.

Quote:
(p.48)
"This solidarity had no conditional limits: rather than form bonds on the basis of their categorical positions as ‘women’, they instead understood themselves and others as part of a universally subjected class (unevenly constituted by race and gender) who could rescue their destiny from the grips of patriarchal, capitalist regimes of power."

Why this quote?
I chose this reading because the intertwining of feminism, communism, and colonialism is especially relevant to my Master’s research, as well as to recent political developments in my home country of Japan. Additionally, it provides a crucial framework for rejecting the coloniality of gender. I have always wondered why, if a social movement opposes a specific type of human suffering, other interconnected forms of suffering are not automatically within its scope. On a practical, hands-on level, political organizing often requires specialization to address specific issues. However, the underlying theoretical goal should be the opposition of all forms of oppression. In that sense, this quote captured my long-standing question as well as a critique of mainstream liberal feminism. Liberal feminism often isolates “women’s issues” from capitalism and colonialism. By contrast, transnational Black Power and feminist organizers understood that systems of oppression are intertwined. They realized that you cannot fight for women’s liberation without also fighting against labor exploitation, racial capitalism, and the violence of the imperial nation-state.

Questions
How can this critique be made in today's neoliberal globalized world?

Connections
The first connection relates directly to my Master’s thesis research, which examines my great-grand-aunt's life as an anti-war activist and communist in wartime Japan. I have been investigating why communism attracted so many Japanese women during a period when their participation in the public sphere was severely restricted. In one of the foundational texts used for my initial research, Reflections on the Way to the Gallows (1988), Mikiso Hane explains that because the Meiji Restoration failed to grant women fundamental freedoms and equal rights, a number of female activists embraced “radical” political philosophies like socialism, anarchism, and communism. I believe Olufemi’s article contextualizes this phenomenon by explaining that in order to free women, they needed to tackle the entire overarching system, as the subjugation of women was inextricably linked to the suffering caused by racism, colonialism, and capitalism.
The second connection concerns the current political landscape in Japan and the recent election of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. Although she shattered the ultimate glass ceiling by becoming the first female prime minister in Japanese history, her tenure represents a highly superficial form of feminism. Often drawing comparisons to Margaret Thatcher, Takaichi is a conservative politician whose leadership actively reinforces traditional patriarchal and nationalist structures. While she has implemented policies for women’s health and workforce retention, she remains opposed to revising civil law to allow married couples to keep separate surnames, opposes the succession of women in the imperial lineage (the Japanese imperial system is another, complex discussion), and upholds revisionist views on Imperial Japan's wartime conduct. This is a stark reminder that representation alone does not equate to systemic progress, and demonstrates that real change comes from dismantling the interconnected structures of capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy, rather than isolating the issue or simply placing a woman at the helm of an inherently oppressive state apparatus.

https://www.amazon.ca/Reflections-Way-Gallows-Rebel-Prewar/dp/0520084217

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%AB%98%E5%B8%82%E6%97%A9%E8%8B%97

Reading: Anderson, K., et.al. (2019). What Can Indigenous Feminist Knowledge and
Practices Bring to “Indigenizing” the Academy? Journal of World Philosophies, 4(1), 121-155.

Quote:
(p.132)
“Yet Indigenous feminist intellectual labor is often obscured, particularly when women’s organizational labor is seen as intersecting with intellectual authority and women’s contributions to epistemic frameworks for liberatory strategy and action (Canabal 2002; Castillo 2000; Cruz 2016; Sánchez 2003). It was Indigenous Chiapotecan women that headed the first Zapatista uprising, yet the revolutionary mythology still persists that the movement was started by Subcomandante Galleano (formerly Marcos).”

Why this quote?
This again really resonated with me because of my Master’s thesis. When looking at resistance against oppression, men tend to be the center of the narrative. This tendency is what gives my research on rural Japanese women’s political activism significance. To reveal such efforts and contributions is crucial in exposing and dismantling the system. The quote is also a reminder of what Olufemi states, which is that to achieve true equality, we must fight the overarching power structure that actively maintains colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism. It is an illustrative example of the difficulty in identifying this overarching power structure and encompassing all of these issues. Additionally, as my final JCR I thought this quote was suitable because it related several concepts, such as coloniality of knowledge, coloniality of gender, and social reproductive labor.

Questions
How do we balance organizational coherence (a particular element of the structure) and an encompassing understanding and targeting of the issue (the overarching intertwined structure)?

Connections

When looking at wartime and pre-war political activism in Japan, there is a very similar example. Japanese anarchists in the Meiji Era identified the emperor as the head of Japanese capitalism and the most exploitative figure. However, much like the Zapatista mythology centering Subcomandante Marcos over Indigenous Chiapotecan women, the historical narrative of Japanese resistance heavily centers male intellectuals like Kōtoku Shūsui while obscuring the foundational intellectual and organizational labor of women. Female anarchists like Kanno Sugako provided crucial frameworks that connected the capitalist state directly to the patriarchal family system (ie), recognizing that the Emperor was both the ultimate capitalist and the ultimate patriarch. Furthermore, mass movements like the 1918 Rice Riots were initiated and strategically organized by rural fisherwomen in Toyama protesting economic extraction, yet their labor is historically diminished as “spontaneous” emotion rather than recognized as calculated political action. Just as Ruiz and Olufemi argue, the Japanese imperial state relied on the active intersection of capitalism and patriarchy to function. Therefore, recovering the specific intellectual and organizational contributions of rural Japanese women is not just about adding women to history; it is required to accurately expose the overarching, intertwined structure of their oppression.