How Do You Make Yourself Become-Imperceptible: Wynter's Colonialism, Deleuze's (un)Learning and Taka Taka's Pedagogy

Abstract

Departing from a White Western perspective, this thesis’ aim is to contribute to a global decolonial revolution. Following Sylvia Wynter’s call for the invention of new kinds or “genres” of the human, this thesis will define the global decolonial revolution as the becoming-other of the world in its entirety. I will therefore begin with a discussion of Wynter’s conception of the human as always being a genre, followed by an in-depth demonstration of our current genre of the human and its abject core, whereby the necessity for a new genre(s) of the human will become indisputable regarding the search of a world beyond inequality. Following Wynter’s theory of the human as essentially inessential besides the potentiality to become a genre(s) of the human, Chapter Two will, firstly, delineate Deleuze’s preferred form of learning and teaching, and secondly, show how this conception of pedagogy meets all of Wynter’s requirements for the invention of a new genre(s) of the human, by which learning corresponds with the invention of a new genre(s) of the human following critical unlearning movements on the part of the learner. This thesis’ last portion will discuss Taka Taka’s drag experimentation-in-action pedagogy. First establishing a conception of drag that speaks in an manner equal to Wynter and Deleuze’s decolonial revolutionary terms, this thesis will argue that Taka Taka’s drag practice correlates with a Deleuzian conception of learning whereby a novel genre of the human as “becoming-imperceptible” (Deleuze and Guattari 2013) is invented. This will be followed by an in-depth investigation in Taka Taka’s teaching practice, in which they do not illustrate the new genre of the human in their teaching but instead facilitate structures whereby the learner comes to be drawn into a mode of perpetual invention, far removed from the hegemonic abject defined genre of the human.