ABSTRACT
Coloniality is a state of breathlessness. Elsewhere, I have argued that this suffocation is coiled through with paranoia, seeping into the cracks of white supremacy, stabilizing it. I call the force that animates these coils psycurity, and I consider how psycurity also moves through Psychology. However, paranoia’s presence may also signal an otherworldly correspondence otherwise exiled within coloniality. This more-than-human capacity – what I come to call imagination – is twisted into paranoia within a context of fear, experiencing a kind of ontologic injustice. Yet, if these roots can be re-turned, perhaps they could offer something for decoloniality. In this chapter, I reflexively analyze a public art project to experiment with this idea. I come to wonder if practices of mystery, ritual, and pausing offer to fertilize, structure, and sustain a space for otherworldly correspondence within suffocating conditions. Obliging a compromise on what we Know, one to think/feel/act, and an art of immanent attention, these three practices can be approached as a tactic of magical ideation that offers psychologies fresh modes of response-ability when committing to decoloniality. This experiment therefore also experiments with re-turning the roots of our discipline – the study of psykhe, meaning both spirit and breath. Drawing attention to form over content, it asks: what if decolonizing psychology is a praxis of (not on) breathing?
