Recently I’ve been thinking and talking to friends about a relational practice “ditch” I’ve been doing together with people in the past few years living in the US.
“ditch” stays in a form on the threshold of animacy that has been rendered mysterious, intense, and messy. There’a a push and pull of the inherent refusal and I have a desire to devote the next few weeks theorizing it.
“We” as post-colonial ghosts, pass through the “ditch”.
The theorization will come in chapters and will be published on my substack which I will continue to update to this collective digital archive.
– Meeting in between linguistic methodologies
“ditch” as a relational practice holds a commitment of dwelling in languages of relationality, flexibility, and possibility throughout the process of theorization.
“ditch” has been largely influenced by various personal social experiences in the United States, various forms of engaging in civil disobedience while physically being in the US and Mexico, critical readings of texts that fall under the categorical curation of decolonial theory, performance studies, indigenous studies, ethnography, critical archival studies in academic contexts of an institution Wesleyan University, and collaborating with various artist or activist.
Acknowledging these forces, me (LW), as a native Mandarin Chinese speaker, intentionally using various genres of American English and español mexicano to conduct this theorization attempt.
Any attempt to theorize “ditch” would be unlikely to refer to definitions. This means the construction of sentences like “‘ditch’ is…” or “‘ditch’ is not…”
The refusal of establishing a boundary of “ditch” makes the theorizing process unlikely to contain a description of the scope of activities operated in the form of “ditch”.
Part 1: Pulling out lotus root fibrhttps://lorenwang.substack.com/p/e7e9c3b4-43be-4b0e-b653-c7d1183a7317?postPreview=paid&updated=2025-05-07T16%3A59%3A53.939Z&audience=everyone&free_preview=false&freemail=truee
Part 2: Our dead continues to haunt us
Part 3: Moving toward a delicious intensity
