Epistemic Disruptions of the Place-Thought Harmony: History is Fiction and Fiction is History

Abstract

This article examines the disruption of place thought harmony in Indigenous and postcolonial societies through the introduction of colonial epistemology based on the human nature divide. It argues that colonial knowledge systems transformed relations between humans, land, and nonhuman life by separating thought from place and knowledge from lived experience. The article first approaches this disruption from a decolonial perspective, focusing on Indigenous critiques of colonial epistemology and the violence produced by the separation of humans from nature. It then turns to the postcolonial context to show how colonial education, language, history, and literary hierarchies reshaped local ways of knowing. By bringing Indigenous place thought into conversation with postcolonial experiences of epistemic disruption, the article shows that colonial epistemology produced related forms of damage across settler and postcolonial societies.