Food for thought: decolonial dining and dreaming as anti-racist praxis

Victoria Burgher

Abstract

Can an art practice using porcelain shed light on colonial histories of white oppression

and encourage constructive dialogue about the ongoing role of ideological whiteness in

racial injustice? As a precious white commodity so entangled with the material culture

of European empires, porcelain is perhaps an apt tool with which to facilitate

discussions of whiteness as a focus for liberatory anti-racism. In collaboration with

participants at workshops and ‘happenings’, I employ a deliberately decolonial

methodology to ‘imagine otherwise’ (Sharpe 2016; Olufemi, 2021) as a praxis of

resistance, to envision ‘the marvelous’[1] of a socially just future. These occasions

encourage a witnessing of plural perspectives – listening, hearing, holding and

embodying others’ voices, experiences and feelings. This working paper focuses on

one such event, a Decolonial Dreaming Dinner, and questions whether creating such a

space allows us to begin to digest the unpalatable realities of white oppression

sufficiently to imagine material and structural change. The work centres communion

and futurity, inspired by Fred Moten’s concept (after Denise Ferreira da Silva) of the

condition in which we live being one of “difference without separability” (Moten 2014)

– dreaming and dining in the service of resistance and liberation.

Keywords: anti-racism, anti-racist praxis, communion, decoloniality, liberation,

resistance, porcelain, whiteness.

Food for thought: decolonial dining and dreaming as anti-racist praxis

For a maker, porcelain is a notoriously difficult material to work with. My research asks

whether these specific properties – its fractiousness and vulnerability when raw, its

strength, pure whiteness and delicate translucency when fired – can be exploited in

contemporary artwork to challenge ideas about ideological whiteness. I argue that

these characteristics are both material and symbolic; porcelain objects embody and

project them. High-value, sought-after porcelainware traded and exchanged during

Europe’s imperial expansion were capable of communicating ideas of whiteness as

power. Once European East India companies, particularly the Dutch and British, began

trading with India and China, blue and white porcelain porcelain exported from China

began to appear in Europe. This, as well as other types of fine porcelain, became

incredibly popular and was collected obsessively by royalty and aristocracy in 17-18th

century Europe. Only the most wealthy could afford to buy it at this time when just

China, Japan and Korea produced it. This desire for porcelain was partly driven by the

burgeoning fashion for drinking tea, coffee and chocolate in late 17th century Europe,

so the demand for suitable crockery – lightweight, heat-retaining and non-porous – also

grew; porcelain provided the perfect vessel for these new drinks. Coffee and chocolate

were often produced by enslaved labour, but all three drinks required the addition of

sugar – the lucrative crop that fuelled the transatlantic slave trade more than any other.

Enslaved labour in British colonies in the Caribbean and South America produced both

the sugar and the wealth necessary to buy the porcelain. Plantation owners sunk their

sugar spoils into ostentatious displays of porcelain; it was a way of saying they had

joined the ranks of the super-rich. Merchants of the East India company also became

hugely wealthy by exploiting Indian resources and used this plunder to buy fine ‘china’.

Porcelain is a commodity embroiled with the brutality of imperial and colonial extraction.

I use porcelain to interrogate the ongoing legacy of oppressive whiteness born of

European empire building. I refer to whiteness, not as a skin colour, but as a false and

socially constructed racialised consciousness that informs the practice of white

superiority through everyday beliefs, emotions, thoughts, choices, behaviours and

actions. This work has to be about liberation, collectively working for a world – to use

Paulo Freire’s words – that is less ugly, more beautiful, less discriminatory, more

democratic, less dehumanising and more humane, for us all (Freire, 2005, p.25). The

decolonial approach I take is informed by Lydia Ayame Hiraide’s focus on the ‘de’ of

decolonial (as opposed to post-colonial or anti-colonial), which positions it as a strategy

“more obviously continuous and reiterative” that “not only opposes domination, but

actively opens up the space of resistance of radical alterity” (Hiraide, 2021). This praxis

of decoloniality entails ‘imagining otherwise’ (Sharpe 2016; Olufemi, 2021) as a

strategy of struggle, to envision and build a socially just future free from white

supremacy. Through my research I aim to develop a consciousness regarding

whiteness that is suitably critical.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò describes the ‘elite capture’ that can derail well-intentioned

knowledge creation between unequally positioned groups as a form of whiteness, and

that its opposite is critical consciousness (Táíwò, 2022). To ensure the liberatory

potential of this project, which aims to counter racism and combat the notion of ‘race’

and the resilience of racial essentialising, I use my practice to test how whiteness can

be explored without it further enacting whiteness. The pitfall to avoid is giving it racial

credence by referring to ‘white’ people as a distinct racial category when ‘race’ is a

biological myth (Saini, 2020). This echoes Fields and Fields’ (2022) warning about the

practice of racecraft, the ‘magical process’ that makes the fiction of ‘race’ real. This

happens when the notion of ‘race’ is used as an explanatory or descriptive category.

What we need to do, they say, is “observe racecraft in action, study its moves, listen to

its language, and root it out” (ibid, p.290). As Kostet and Verschraegen warn, a “focus

on whiteness as a clearly defined category runs the risk of a-historicising and

simplifying whiteness, neglecting other facets of identity and power dynamics” (Kostet

and Verschraegen, 2024, p.12). Whiteness is not static or fixed and floats in a sea of

relational differences, whether of gender, class, sexuality or geography (Hall, 1997).

Steve Garner conceptualises whiteness in two paradoxical, but not mutually exclusive,

ways: whiteness is invisible because as the norm it is never scrutinised; and whiteness

is highly visible because of its power (Garner, 2007, p.34). Whiteness is both a system

that benefits all those racialised as ‘white’, and a cultural identity – but not one chosen

by all its beneficiaries. As Garner highlights, individual racism is often roundly decried

by ‘white’ people who see racism as practised by ‘white trash’ and far-right extremists,

but this means they manage to then ignore institutional racism and their role in it (ibid,

pp.15, 78). This ‘being white while not being white’ is theorised by Charles Mills in The

Racial Contract (1997), where he separates phenotype whiteness from a

politico-economic whiteness dedicated to white supremacy. He claims that

unquestioningly accepting the privileges of whiteness, and thereby being complicit with

the system of white supremacy, is consenting to whiteness (ibid, p.106). But signing the

racial contract is not obligatory; ‘white’ people have a genuine choice available to them,

which requires rejecting the terms of the contract and speaking out against it. So, while

whiteness is an identity for some, it is also an ideology, a lens and a currency. In all its

forms it needs to be named for its role in racism, social inequity and injustice. However,

the necessity of naming whiteness without further empowering it is a balancing act that

runs throughout my project. I seek to heed Emma Dabiri’s demand that “we should

invoke it [whiteness] only to slay it” (Dabiri, 2021, p.5).

To put porcelain to work in this way, I first started by making exhibitable objects

(Figs.1-2) and then moved on to collaborating with participants in workshops, creating

badges (Fig. 3).

Fig. 1: 'Pithy' (2022) Glazed porcelain, hand-painted cobalt decoration and gold lustre (30x18x16cm)

Fig. 2: 'Weaponised Whiteness' (2021)

Porcelain, glass, glitter, glycerine, water (8x11cm)

Fig. 3: 'Making Whiteness Seen But Not Heard'

(2023)

Unfired porcelain badges made in workshops

Reflecting on these approaches, I felt that, although they had their merits, they were not

useful vehicles for ‘imagining otherwise’, focusing as they did on current and historical

white oppression. This understanding pushed me to deliberate on what I was aiming for

in terms of an anti-racist practice. This required an analysis of the two traditions of

anti-racism – liberal and radical – that have developed within the context of

multiculturalism and racism in the UK. The divide that splits these two camps can be

summed up by the words of Ambalavaner Sivanandan: “People’s attitudes don't mean

a damn to me... Racism is about power, not prejudice” (Sivanandan, 1990, p.65).

Anti-racism’s ideological split concerns how to tackle racism. Liberal anti-racists, for

example, come under fire for focusing on policing the correct use of racial terms, rather

than taking direct action. This, as Sivanandan stressed, is absolutely justified, since

“abolishing a word does not abolish the social forces it expresses” (ibid). Radical

anti-racists call for wholesale structural change and the end of capitalism. The roots of

this approach lie in the non-Western contributions to Enlightenment universalism, such

as that which inspired the Haitian revolution. This universalism was anti-imperialist,

anti-capitalist, rejected liberal individualism and embraced collective action. It was a

philosophy embodied by Frederick Douglass, Sylvia Pankhurst, Claude McKay and

CLR James, among others (Malik, 2023, p.271). However, this radical perspective was

killed off by the era of Racial Awareness Training in the 1980s that Sivanandan so

scorned, when a focus on educating individuals about their racism successfully severed

racism from an “exploitative white power structure”.[2] Losing this universalist focus

means a sense of common humanity is also lost, making singular identities more

polarised and identity politics more influential (ibid, p.261). This individualistic

understanding of anti-racism focuses on attitudes and changing minds, and is rooted in

the belief that racism stems from a personal irrational moral failure. However, as

Kundnani (2023) highlights, the core problem of racism is not individually held irrational

beliefs, but that it exists as a societal force independent of whether most people

subscribe to it or not (ibid, p.30). He is convinced that the type of anti-racist strategy

that focuses on educating one mind at a time achieves nothing and that anti-racism has

to be about more than personal development for people privileged by structural racism

(ibid, pp.4-5). Anti-racist activists such as Azfar Shafi and Ilyas Nagdee (2022) are also

keen to refocus efforts on the radical approach; the position they take ties racism

closely to the uneven distribution of economic resources among different racial groups.

With the above analysis in mind, I use anti-racism to refer to “the active process of

identifying and eliminating racism by changing systems, organisational structures,[2]

policies, practices and attitudes, so that power is redistributed and shared equitably”.[3]

However, as Kundnani writes, “structural racism circulates through individual attitudes

and behaviours, sometimes unconsciously... ” (Kundnani, 2023, p.4), which suggests to

me that working with individuals, as I do in my events and workshops, could have

potential for anti-racist learning. Racism as defined by Sivamohan Valluvan is no

aberration, but

“an accrued set of state practices, discursively embedded assumptions,

and also everyday perceptions that guide both governance but also our

popular conceptions of identity, community and general subjectification”

(Valluvan, 2022, p.466).

It is these everyday perceptions, conceptions, assumptions and practices that are worth

focusing on, while recognising that the liberal, interpersonal approach alone is

inadequate. As Sivanandan reminded us, there is an important distinction between the

racism that discriminates and the racism that kills (Gordon, 2014), but perhaps raising

individual consciousness of complicity in systemic oppression has some potential as a

starting point for anti-racism, before going on to think much more critically about the

structural upholding of racism.

Considering how porcelain could assist me in bringing people together to witness plural

perspectives on oppressive whiteness led me to the idea of the gift of hospitality as a

method of anti-racist praxis. I decided to make a series of porcelain dinner plates and

invite a group to come together, share a meal and start to ‘imagine otherwise’. A

ceremonial dinner service can connote gestures of grandeur and performing privilege,

but this work was designed as an act of non-hierarchical generosity. I hoped that sitting

down and sharing food would create an opportunity to ask what freedom from

whiteness could look like, learning from each others’ differing positions and

contributions, as well as potential silences. Coming together over a meal is very

different from a workshop and I wanted the event to provide the necessary conditions to

‘tarry together’, a process that

“encourages forms of courageous listening, humility and the capacity to be

touched, to be shaken by those black bodies and bodies of colour that

have achieved and honed degrees of epistemic complexity regarding

white racism” (Yancy, 2015, p.26).

An important part of the curation of this event was my invited guests; they were largely

friends I have made during my PhD research, most of whom are engaged in thinking

critically about colonial history, race and decoloniality. I felt it was important to have this

common degree of ‘racial’ literacy so that the space would feel safe enough to share

and witness examples of lived experience, both as oppressed and oppressors. As a

group they brought a very broad range of perspectives and intersectional marginalities.

This was my invitation to them:

“My inspiration for this event draws on Aimé Césaire’s call ‘to dare to

imagine a radically different way of living and invent the marvellous. Write

revolutionary graffiti across the ‘great’ texts of Western civilisation. Write

poetry’. I am using the plates I have made for you to immortalise others’

poetry as a means and source of revolt, and as a conversation starter.

This dinner will give us an opportunity to ‘write poetry’ and ‘imagine

otherwise’, as Lola Olufemi suggests – to dare to dream of what a future

delinked from the colonial matrix of power and white supremacy might look

and feel like. What can we hope for in these dark days of ongoing settler

colonial atrocity? This dinner will provide a space to respect each others’

positions, contributions and silences.”

I made each guest a bespoke porcelain plate hand painted in cobalt blue and gold

lustre with quotes from African diaspora writers along with imagery of plants and

flowers found in the Caribbean (Fig. 4). I decided to again use the classic

blue-and-white aesthetic of imported East Asian porcelain as a way of transferring the

symbolic value of this material language from oppressor to oppressed. Immortalising

diaspora poets’ words in ceramic follows Aimé Césaire’s requirement that poetry be

used as a source of knowledge and revolt and that Black voices be centred in the

rewriting of the colonial history of subjugation (Césaire, 2000). The quotes I chose all

referenced emancipatory hopes, freedom dreams and decolonial struggles in some

way, chosen with each guest in mind. For example, the words of Vanessa Kisuule,

“Take up space, don’t wait for permission or approval; the journey has been long, but

Fig. 4: ‘Vanessa Kisuule plate’ (2023) Glazed porcelain, hand-painted cobalt and gold lustre (25cm)

now you can take up space, in any way you choose”, felt apt for one particular guest.

Before we sat down to eat I asked them to choose which plate spoke to them most.

About half of them chose the plate I had in mind and in some cases this was because

the imagery had been more of a draw than the words. This activity served as a good

icebreaker and the participants’ thoughts on their choice informed a large part of our

conversation over the first part of the dinner. We then moved on to a more general

discussion about what freedom meant for all of us from our different and yet not

separate experiences, in the universalist sense that informed early radical anti-racism.

This is also inspired by Fred Moten who says that: “The condition within which we live

is one of difference without separability... the brutality of life emerges out of our refusal

or our disavowal of that fact” (Moten, 2014). The separateness created by individualism

creates ‘the other’, so creating a space of safety and intimacy allows us to become

sufficiently entangled to discuss freedom from whiteness. Just as the work of the

Combahee River Collective highlighted, the focus of liberatory struggle needs to be on

forging alliances across differences, not closing ranks along group interest lines (Táíwò,

2022). Important here too is Freire’s emphasis on the need to recognise the part of the

oppressor deeply rooted within us, and which knows the oppressor’s tactics and

relationships, and to do this by looking critically at the world through dialogical

encounter with others (Lorde, 2007, p.116). This is about dialogue as a genuine way of

learning and knowing, going far beyond a conversation to create new knowledge based

on lived experience. To paraphrase Claudia Rankine, we need to have proper messy

conversations about the true nature of whiteness and racism if we are to begin to

visualise a world beyond them (Rankine, 2020, p.39). As Australian Aboriginal activist

Lilla Watson so powerfully recognised, once we realise liberation for the oppressor is

bound up with liberation for the oppressed, then we can work together.[4]

Fig. 5: ‘Decolonial Dreaming Dinner’ (2023)

Fig. 6: ‘Decolonial Dreaming Dinner’ (2023)

The dinner felt like a genuinely joyful act of community in resistance to the

separateness and fracturing that whiteness imposes, which was reflected in some of

the feedback I received from guests:

“The intimate nature of the event made it an extremely safe space to

speak frankly about my own family history of indentured servitude,

partition and generational trauma. It also gave me the opportunity to speak

of hope and implementing decoloniality into my own parenting and work.

The entire process was a reclamation of the power in connection between

those with lived experience of colonisation and those who dedicate their

working lives to some kind of betterment of decoloniality.”

“There was a sense of healing in sharing our stories and pain. I have

never felt closer to a decolonial future. This should be the future of

decolonial dreaming for us; relaxed, therapeutic spaces that allow

participants to imagine and hope for a future free from white supremacy.”

“I felt like I had a voice. I felt like practising deep listening. I thought that I

belonged. This work is a spark. We need to promote more spaces like this.

More eating. More sharing. More humanisation. Promote possibilities for

people to engage, unlearn and undo – a plurality of voices. Then, we will

be experiencing otherwise.”

After the dinner, I asked guests to design their own plates in response to our dreams

of freedom as a way of materially cementing these hopes, and this series will be used

in the next iteration of the event (Figs. 7-8). Minnie Bruce Pratt, in Identity: Skin Blood

Heart (Pratt, 2009 (1984)), reflects on her growth into consciousness and activism.

She believes that to know how to act against racism, or even to know a situation is

racist, requires judgement, ethics and feeling. Developing these relies on gathering up

both information and “the threads of life that connect us to others” (ibid, p.38). To get

outside your own cultural, racial and social boundaries you must be willing to face

how much you do not know, and I hope that the Decolonial Dreaming Dinner event

provided an opportunity for this. It is important that those who benefit from whiteness

become increasingly conscious of their power and privilege in relation to marginalised

others. Focusing on what whiteness does rather than what whiteness is, has the

greatest potential for effective anti-racist action. As Judith Butler said:

“To be undone by another is a primary necessity, an anguish, to be

sure, but also a chance – to be addressed, claimed, bound to what is

not me, but also to be moved, to be prompted to act, to address myself

elsewhere, and so to vacate the self-sufficient ‘I’ as a kind of

possession.” (Butler, 2005, p.136).

Figs. 7-8: 'Freedom Dreams' plates (2023)

Glazed porcelain, cobalt and gold lustre (25cm)

Footnotes:

[1] Suzanne Césaire’s call to “be in permanent readiness for The Marvelous” is a key inspiration of the Afrosurrealist aesthetic movement, see Miller (2016)

https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2016/10/afrosurreal-the-marvelous-and-the-invisible/

[2] See A. Sivandandan on Racism Awareness Training, speaking in Manchester, 1982 https://asivanandan.com/rat-and-the-degradation-of-black-struggle/

[3] Attributed to NAC International Perspectives: Women and Global Solidarity and accessed at https://www.aclrc.com/anti-racism

[4] See https://lillanetwork.wordpress.com/about/

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Author Biography

Victoria Burger is an artist whose practice-based, interdisciplinary PhD research at the University of Westminster is entitled “Crafting counter-hegemony: using porcelain to interrogate ideological whiteness as anti-racist practice”. Her sculptural work using colonial commodities is exhibited nationally and internationally.

Ethics and Funding Statement

This research is Technē/AHRC funded and received ethical approval from the University of Westminster DCDI College Research and Knowledge Exchange Ethics Committee in December 2022.

How to cite this paper: Burgher, V. (2025). Food for thought: decolonial dining and dreaming as anti-racist praxis. ‘Race’ and Socially Engaged Research Working Paper 2024: Contributions from second conference held in York. Volume 2, pp. 40-55, https://sites.google.com/view/raceandsociallyengagedresearch/publications/working-paper/2025-volume-2/food-for-thought-decolonial-dining-and-dreaming-as-anti-racist-praxis.