#69 Chesline Pierre-Paul on repoliticising language and identity
“Gender neutrality and inclusion is trendy politically and in circles that are Anglocentric, but indigenous cultures, African indigenous cultures, have been doing this forever. So for me, grammar to ideology awakens me to a new construct of the world, and then I get to properly honour the indigenous sound systems that predate what we’re looking at as so-called ‘modernity’, and it also expands my mind where I have so many different ways of interpreting the world, that English becomes secondary and not particularly relevant.”
How can immigrants, or children of immigrants, resist the colonial tendency to homogenise their identities into quantifiable categories? What power does repoliticising languages having histories of linguistic and cultural genocide hold for communities working to preserve the sacrality of their ancestral tongue within a dominant culture which centers Eurowestern language ideologies?
Today we reunite with Chesline Pierre-Paul to continue on the conversation from the previous episode on decolonising our relationship with money as a means to build multidirectional wealth, specifically focusing on the liberatory practices of repoliticising language and identity. In this intricately layered episode, Ches beautifully walks us through their journey of reclamation and rematriation of their Haitian identity as a child of political refugees. By embedding their life experiences, Ches guides us through the anti-colonial practices of retranslation and decentering western language ideologies as we mindfully honour the stories, cultures and identities of our ancestors who pre-dated the dominant languages in concern.
Ches is a multi-award-winning DEI expert and global thought leader. Their mission is to help the most disenfranchised humans on Earth go from generational debt and poverty to multi-generational wealth and healing. They run © Chesline Inc., the most innovative and transformational DEI consulting firm and digital global edtech company in the world, and they use low-cost online education to help Queer, BIPOC, Gen Z, and Millennial college and university dropouts live amazing 6-figure lives and careers without ever going back to school. Ches shows them how to thrive, not survive, in a White man's world without selling out, giving up, or settling.
What will be covered:
Ches’ reclamation and rematriation journey to being their own identity that goes beyond their parents’ experiences
Ches’ conceptualisation of cultural continuums and everyone being an ‘unrepeatable instance’ in the universe
Resisting urge to perform and assimilate into cultural stereotypes which appeal to the status quo
The somatic and ancestral ritual of training tongue and mouth to make sounds and formulate words of the ancestral tongue
Grammar as a sense of logic not just meaning and expression —> learning how to decenter English grammar when using non-western languages
Using the anti-colonial practice of retranslation to remedy cultural harms committed by translation, particularly of sacred texts which are not meant to be translated
Language as a limitless body of ancestral and epistemic knowledge
Ches’ embodiment practices to connect with your roots
Ches’ resources:
Listen to our first conversation with Ches on decolonising our relationship with money here
Connect with Ches on Instagram
Sign up to Ches’ newsletter
