You Will Pretend It Has Great Value

Or, Grifters Gonna Grift.

At Montreal’s Concordia University, even light is being “decolonised.” Because “colonialism in contemporary physics” is a thing, you see. No, really, it is. A thing that must be “countered” in the name of piety. By people with salaries and lots of taxpayer subsidy:

The project occupies the time of “equity, diversity and inclusion advisor” Tanja Tajmel and Associate Professor of First Peoples Studies Louellyn White, and draws on the magical almost-brownness of Donna Kahérakwas Goodleaf, a member of the Turtle Clan from Kahnawà:ke, and who was hired by Concordia to “facilitate anti-colonial training.” Combined, their efforts will be,

I suspect this is where the words bad whitey will be inserted. After all, there ain’t no grift in a context that isn’t heaving with pretentious guilt.

Apparently, “all physicists and other scientists” should divert time and effort from their actual work, the important stuff, the thing that pays the bills, in order to become familiar with indigenous “bodies of knowledge.” Presumably, on grounds that one simply can’t do physics or astronomy without a detailed knowledge of magical talking beavers and rival chiefs stealing the Moon. 

This “indigenous knowledge,” the particulars of which are elusive and treated rather coyly, will, we’re told, be “elevated” – presumably, above its station – while “Eurocentric western science” – or, you know, science – will be “de-centred and scrutinised” for any residual wickedness. Any oppressive taint. And hey, what better use could there be of other people’s time and money? 

The assembled scholars boast that they are “not seeking to improve scientific ‘truth’” and that the purpose of their intellectual toil is “not to find new or better explanations of light.” As if such gifts were theirs to give, or a remotely plausible outcome. Instead, they are vexed by the “social power relations” of scientific enquiry, its objectivity and usefulness, and the fact that the quantifiable and demonstrable tends to trump mythology and the adorable ramblings of one’s Very Indigenous Grandpa.

Apparently, this preference for things that actually work is terribly unfair, an affront to “social equity,” resulting in the “marginalisation” of those whose self-esteem is grounded in the obsolete and inadequate, and hence the imperative to “decolonise” All The Things.

And so, instead of all that incidental fluff about the role of light in quantum mechanics, and all those exhausting equations that enable us to do things, the focus will be on such burning scientific questions as “What person was Max Planck?” and, more importantly, “How was his work related to colonialism?” A term inflated, farcically, to include almost anything. On top of which will be piled the deep, deep insights of “feminist theory” and “critical race theory.” Yes, the very stuff of scientific breakthroughs. And these begged questions and dull, dogmatic witterings are framed as “part of physics in a holistic sense.”

As seen, for instance, here, where “Cree astronomer” Wilfred Buck – also an “astrologer” and “educator” – imparts his, er, wisdom regarding the cosmos. The drum-beating starts around five minutes in, in between the obligatory land acknowledgements and the confessions of colonial pallor. 

I know, I’m sorry. It’s time you won’t get back.

The benefits of the “decolonising” project for advancing the frontiers of optics, astronomy and physics are, rather conveniently, left to the imagination. But then, that is the custom among peddlers of intersectional quackery and woo. The omissions do make the required pretending so much easier. I am, of course, assuming that one can’t actually summon the Aurora Borealis by whistling.

And yes, we’ve done this dance before. 

More than once. 

And we doubtless will again.