Indigenous Knowledges and New Materialism: A Citation Analysis of Exclusion

Abstract

The dissertation reveals the exclusion of Indigenous knowledges from the emergence of new materialism, object oriented ontology, and posthumanism. Indigenous knowledges have a much longer history of engaging material and environmental agency than the aforementioned theories, and their exclusion is an example of Western epistemic dominance. Using citation network analysis, I visualize the new materialism, OOO, and posthumanism citation network in rhetoric and composition to reveal the exclusion of Indigenous knowledges as an act of epistemological settler colonialism. I utilize distorted gaze as a concept to describe the implicit bias and colonial conditionings leading to the exclusion. I use Native feminist theories to explain the interaction of settler colonialism and sexism, specifically heteropatriarchy, in the citation network. Finally, I discuss Indigenous relationality as a way to rethink and transform knowledge-making networks.