Abstract
This video paper deliberates the questions and politics of authorship inherent to the interpretative processes of The ‘Counter // Narratives’ Project, which sought to explore how counter-stories may see a way through the myopia of the social delegitimation of the western-oriented academy, and possibly provide challenge to reproductions of internalised oppression.
During 2019 and 2020, the life history narratives of first generation academics from Angola, India, South Africa, Syria and Zimbabwe were engaged with by visual artists, many of whom are themselves first generation university-educated. In each of these contexts, a critical mass of those from groups and knowledge systems misrecognised and oppressed have negotiated radical changes in the figures and institutions of authority in their countries. Against the dominant hero narratives of social mobility and exceptionalism, and the looming spectres of colonial universities’ mythologies of quality as sameness and exclusion, the artists grappled with the ethico-historical responsibility of bearing witness, but also creating generative and equitious imaginaries through their creative arts research practice. Drawing on reflective interviews with the artists and participants, we share insights into the layers of narration the contributors to this project negotiated, including the intersections between those layers and the visual discourses and micro-textuality of the final films. Excerpts from the films, stills, transcripts and audience reception responses are referenced visually and within the narration by the research-curatorial team, Belluigi and Meistre, to provide a rich and complex dialogue about the im-possibilities of representing and visualising emancipatory imaginaries.