Rebuilding Eighteenth-Century Studies as a Relational Ecology

Abstract

Abstract:The recent racial reckoning with white supremacist practices within institutions has produced a discourse of how institutions can "decolonize" themselves. This essay specifically scrutinizes how academic organizations like the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) have mined the lived experience and scholarly expertise of its BIPOC and other historically marginalized members as a way to insulate themselves from their own complicity. Giving these members a platform to think through their own painful experiences can be an exploitative practice without meaningful subsequent action that directly acknowledges those experiences. Inspired by Indigenous epistemology, "relational ecology" reimagines the ways in which organizations can begin to transform themselves by centering an ethics of care through responsive acts of listening and through adequate compensation for leadership positions.