https://emsenn.net/tags/decolonial/ Recent content in Decolonial on emsenn.net Hugo en Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://emsenn.net/library/domains/engineering/domains/games/domains/role-playing-games/domains/tabletop-role-playing-games/texts/decolonial-ttrpgs/ Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://emsenn.net/library/domains/engineering/domains/games/domains/role-playing-games/domains/tabletop-role-playing-games/texts/decolonial-ttrpgs/ <p>Decolonial TTRPGs are a loose school of tabletop role-playing design, criticism, and publishing that treats role-playing games as historically entangled with colonial power. This school does not assume that fantasy worlds, rules structures, or campaign premises are neutral. It asks what kinds of land, personhood, conflict, authorship, and authority a game normalizes, and then tries to redesign those relations.</p> <p>This is not one engine or one canon. It is a tendency spread across critical essays, community discussion, Indigenous-led publishing, anti-colonial setting work, and designs that refuse conquest as the default loop of adventure.</p> https://emsenn.net/library/domains/engineering/domains/games/domains/role-playing-games/domains/tabletop-role-playing-games/texts/ttrpg-research-notes/ Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://emsenn.net/library/domains/engineering/domains/games/domains/role-playing-games/domains/tabletop-role-playing-games/texts/ttrpg-research-notes/ <p>This text records the source base behind the current <a href="../specifications/tabletop-role-playing-games.md" class="link-internal">tabletop role-playing games</a> module so future revisions can start from a stable corpus instead of repeating web searches. It is a working research map, not a finished essay.</p> <h2 id="foundational-academic-sources"><a href="#foundational-academic-sources" class="heading-anchor" aria-label="Link to this section">¶</a>Foundational academic sources </h2> <p>These sources are strong starting points for almost any TTRPG page in this module.</p> <ul> <li>Gary Alan Fine, <em>Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds</em>. Useful for the social-world account of role-playing and for understanding table norms as institutions. <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo5949823.html" class="link-external">https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo5949823.html</a></li> <li>Jennifer Grouling Cover, <em>Tabletop Role-Playing Games: Perspectives from Narrative, Game, and Rhetorical Theory</em>. Useful for medium distinction, rhetoric, and the difference between tabletop and software-limited RPGs. <a href="https://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/items/32caa2a7-55fa-496f-b9e4-8c8a252f03c2" class="link-external">https://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/items/32caa2a7-55fa-496f-b9e4-8c8a252f03c2</a></li> <li>Jose P. Zagal and Sebastian Deterding, eds., <em>The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies</em>. Best broad academic anchor for the field as of 2024. <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Role-Playing-Game-Studies/Zagal-Deterding/p/book/9781032277783" class="link-external">https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Role-Playing-Game-Studies/Zagal-Deterding/p/book/9781032277783</a></li> <li>Analog Game Studies, &ldquo;Analog Game Studies 101.&rdquo; Strong open bibliography for finding adjacent scholarship fast. <a href="https://analoggamestudies.org/about/analog-game-studies-101/" class="link-external">https://analoggamestudies.org/about/analog-game-studies-101/</a></li> <li>Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter, and Jose P. Zagal, eds., <em>Fifty Years of Dungeons &amp; Dragons</em>. Useful when the module needs to address D and D critically rather than treating it as the default form. <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262547604/fifty-years-of-dungeons-and-dragons/" class="link-external">https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262547604/fifty-years-of-dungeons-and-dragons/</a></li> </ul> <h2 id="materials-and-artifact-design"><a href="#materials-and-artifact-design" class="heading-anchor" aria-label="Link to this section">¶</a>Materials and artifact design </h2> <p>These sources are the best fit for the module&rsquo;s current work on <a href="../terms/scenario.md" class="link-internal">scenario</a>, <a href="../terms/handout.md" class="link-internal">handout</a>, <a href="../terms/reference-sheet.md" class="link-internal">reference sheet</a>, and campaign documents.</p> https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/knowledge-transmission/terms/ceremonial-transmission/ Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/knowledge-transmission/terms/ceremonial-transmission/ <p><a href="./ceremonial-transmission.md" class="link-internal">Ceremonial transmission</a> is the carrying of knowledge through ceremony — particular practices performed at particular times, in particular places, by particular people. It is a mode of <a href="../index.md" class="link-internal">knowledge transmission</a> in which the knowledge is inseparable from the relational and ritual context that gives it meaning.</p> <p>Ceremonial transmission carries knowledge that is sacred, restricted, or relationally constituted:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Relational knowledge.</strong> The knowledge belongs to specific relationships — between people, between people and place, between the living and the ancestors. It cannot be extracted from these relationships and transmitted independently without losing its meaning or doing harm.</li> <li><strong>Temporal specificity.</strong> Particular knowledge is shared at particular times — seasons, life stages, ceremonial occasions. The timing is part of the knowledge, not a contingent detail of its delivery.</li> <li><strong>Preparation and obligation.</strong> Receiving ceremonial knowledge requires preparation — physical, spiritual, relational. The knowledge carries obligations to the community and to the sources from which it comes. Unauthorized transmission damages the web of relationships that the knowledge exists within.</li> <li><strong>Embodied and oral integration.</strong> Ceremonial transmission typically integrates <a href="./oral-transmission.md" class="link-internal">oral</a> and <a href="./embodied-transmission.md" class="link-internal">embodied</a> modes — song, chant, gesture, movement, spatial arrangement — into a unified practice that cannot be reduced to any single mode.</li> </ul> <p>This mode challenges the Western assumption that knowledge should be universally accessible. Some knowledge is rightly restricted — not because of scarcity or elitism, but because it is relational: sharing it outside its proper context would damage the relationships that constitute it. This is not a deficiency to be overcome by broader dissemination; it is a feature of a knowledge system that takes relationships seriously.</p> https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/pedagogy/terms/culturally-sustaining-pedagogy/ Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/pedagogy/terms/culturally-sustaining-pedagogy/ <p><a href="./culturally-sustaining-pedagogy.md" class="link-internal">Culturally sustaining pedagogy</a> is an approach to education that seeks to sustain — not merely tolerate or respond to — the cultural practices, languages, and knowledge systems of communities that have been marginalized by dominant educational institutions.</p> <p>The framework developed through three generations:</p> <p><strong>Culturally relevant pedagogy</strong> was articulated by Gloria Ladson-Billings in 1995. She argued that effective teaching for Black students requires three commitments: academic success (high expectations and rigorous learning), cultural competence (students develop and maintain their cultural identity rather than assimilating), and sociopolitical consciousness (students learn to critique social inequities). This framework challenged deficit models that treated Black students&rsquo; cultures as obstacles to learning [@ladsonBillings_DreamkeepersSuccessful_2009].</p> https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/pedagogy/terms/freedom-school/ Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/pedagogy/terms/freedom-school/ <p>A <a href="./freedom-school.md" class="link-internal">freedom school</a> is a community-organized educational institution created outside the state school system to serve Black communities and other communities denied adequate education. The term originates with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which established freedom schools during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer as part of the broader struggle for civil rights and Black self-determination [@payne_IveGotLightFreedom_2007].</p> <p>The Mississippi freedom schools enrolled over two thousand students in a curriculum that centered Black history, critical questioning, and political organizing — subjects absent from or distorted in the segregated public schools. Teachers came from the community and from allied organizations. The schools operated on the principle that education must serve liberation: that learning Black history, analyzing structures of power, and developing the capacity for collective action are not separate activities but one practice [@hale_FreedomSchools_2016].</p> https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/knowledge-transmission/terms/knowledge-sovereignty/ Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/knowledge-transmission/terms/knowledge-sovereignty/ <p><a href="./knowledge-sovereignty.md" class="link-internal">Knowledge sovereignty</a> is the right of a people or community to control the production, interpretation, transmission, and use of their own knowledge. It asserts that communities — not outside researchers, institutions, or states — have authority over their intellectual traditions, and that knowledge extracted without consent or accountability is a form of appropriation regardless of how accurately it is reproduced.</p> <p>The concept is most explicitly developed in Indigenous political thought. <a href="../../../../general/domains/people/linda-tuhiwai-smith.md" class="link-internal">Linda Tuhiwai Smith</a>&rsquo;s <em>Decolonizing Methodologies</em> established that Western research traditions have functioned as instruments of colonization — extracting knowledge from Indigenous peoples, reframing it in Western categories, and using it to justify colonial governance [@smith_DecolonizingMethodologies_2021]. Knowledge sovereignty is the counter-claim: Indigenous communities determine the questions asked, the methods used, the interpretation of results, and the conditions of dissemination.</p> https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/knowledge-transmission/terms/oral-transmission/ Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/knowledge-transmission/terms/oral-transmission/ <p><a href="./oral-transmission.md" class="link-internal">Oral transmission</a> is the carrying of knowledge through speech, story, song, chant, proverb, and spoken instruction — without dependence on textual inscription. It is the oldest and most widespread mode of knowledge transmission, practiced by every human culture and still primary in many.</p> <p>Oral transmission is not a deficiency. It is a mode with specific capabilities that text lacks:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Contextual adaptation.</strong> The storyteller adjusts the telling to the audience, the situation, the season, the purpose. The &ldquo;same&rdquo; story told to children and to elders carries different knowledge. This adaptability is a feature, not a limitation — it keeps knowledge alive and responsive rather than frozen.</li> <li><strong>Relational embedding.</strong> Oral knowledge is transmitted in relationship — between speaker and listener, between elder and youth, between the living and the ancestors whose words are carried forward. The relationship is part of the knowledge: who tells, who listens, and under what conditions matters.</li> <li><strong>Mnemonic structure.</strong> Oral traditions develop sophisticated mnemonic devices — rhythm, rhyme, repetition, formulaic phrases, narrative structure, musical form — that enable faithful transmission across generations without writing. These structures are not primitive substitutes for literacy; they are technologies of memory with their own rigor.</li> <li><strong>Embodied presence.</strong> Oral transmission requires the presence of the speaker — their voice, gesture, expression, breath. Knowledge carried in these dimensions is lost when reduced to transcript.</li> </ul> <p>Oral transmission is primary in <a href="../../pedagogy/schools/indigenous-pedagogies/index.md" class="link-internal">Indigenous pedagogies</a>, where storytelling, ceremony, and mentorship are the principal modes of education. It is central to <a href="../../pedagogy/schools/black-radical-pedagogies/index.md" class="link-internal">Black radical pedagogies</a>, where the sermon, the testimony, the freedom song, and the study circle carry knowledge that written archives cannot hold. It is present in <a href="../../pedagogy/schools/non-western-pedagogies/index.md" class="link-internal">non-Western pedagogies</a> — the ubuntu tradition, Buddhist oral lineages, Islamic <em>halqa</em> study circles.</p> https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/pedagogy/terms/popular-education/ Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/pedagogy/terms/popular-education/ <p><a href="./popular-education.md" class="link-internal">Popular education</a> (<em>educación popular</em>) is education organized by and for communities, outside the control of the state or formal institutions, directed toward collective understanding and action. It draws on <a href="../../../../general/domains/people/paulo-freire.md" class="link-internal">Paulo Freire</a>&rsquo;s work [@freire_PedagogyOppressed_1970] but predates it — workers&rsquo; education movements, anarchist schools, and community-based literacy campaigns have practiced forms of popular education since at least the 19th Century.</p> <p>Popular education treats the learner&rsquo;s own experience and conditions as the starting point for inquiry. Curricula emerge from the community&rsquo;s situation rather than being imposed from outside. The facilitator (not &ldquo;teacher&rdquo; in the conventional sense) helps participants analyze their conditions, identify structures of power, and develop strategies for action. Learning serves <a href="./conscientization.md" class="link-internal">conscientization</a> — critical awareness combined with the capacity to act.</p> https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/pedagogy/texts/decolonial-pedagogy/ Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/pedagogy/texts/decolonial-pedagogy/ <h2 id="what-decolonial-pedagogy-is"><a href="#what-decolonial-pedagogy-is" class="heading-anchor" aria-label="Link to this section">¶</a>What decolonial pedagogy is </h2> <p>Decolonial pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning that interrogates the colonial structures embedded in education — in curricula, in institutions, in the assumptions about what counts as knowledge and who counts as a knower. It draws on critical pedagogy, Indigenous epistemologies, and anti-colonial thought to reimagine education as a practice of liberation rather than reproduction.</p> <p>The starting claim: education is never neutral. Every curriculum makes choices about what to include and exclude, what forms of knowledge to privilege, what languages to use, what histories to center. These choices carry political weight. Decolonial pedagogy makes those choices visible and asks who they serve.</p> https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/pedagogy/terms/land-based-education/ Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://emsenn.net/library/domains/humanities/domains/education/domains/pedagogy/terms/land-based-education/ <p><a href="./land-based-education.md" class="link-internal">Land-based education</a> is a framework in which the land itself is understood as teacher and curriculum. It emerges from Indigenous intellectual traditions that treat place, ecological relationship, and sustained presence on the land as primary sources of knowledge — not metaphorically, but as the actual medium through which specific knowledge (ecological, ceremonial, political, medicinal) is produced and transmitted.</p> <p><a href="../../../../general/domains/people/leanne-simpson.md" class="link-internal">Leanne Betasamosake Simpson</a> articulates this as &ldquo;land as pedagogy&rdquo; [@simpson_AsWeHaveAlwaysDone_2017]: knowledge comes from attentive, reciprocal relationship with specific places and the beings who inhabit them. This relationship is cultivated through practice — observation, participation, ceremony, seasonal cycles — not through textual study alone.</p>