Living Decoloniality, practical examples of decolonial
re-existence through the aid sector, a podcast by Carla Vitantonio with the support of the
Center for Humanitarian Leadership.


Welcome back to the third season of Living Decoloniality.
I am Carla Vitantonio and the sounds and noises you hear in the background
are from the city where I live and work Havana, Cuba.
Behind the scenes with me there is Matilde Dani, and we are both very grateful to the Center
for Humanitarian Leadership for supporting us while this adventure
through decolonial practices around the aid sector continues.
I started this podcast on my own in spring 2023.
It was quite an undertake.
In 2023, Coloniality was not a thing in the sector.
Quite some actors were talking about decolonizing NGOs
and exactly in 2023 the Pledge for change was launched.
But there was quite some confusion on what is what.
What do we want to decolonize? How do we want to do it?
And above all, what does it mean to decolonize?
Two years later the framework originally created by Anibal Quijano
is rather well known and we can see that also some respectable institutions are interested in it.
In 2024, one of the panels of the Development Studies Association conference
held at the SOAS in London was called Coloniality and Epistemic Justice.
Coloniality is also mentioned in the theoretical framework of many respectable organizations
that have embarked on their journey through decolonization.
One of these is the International Women Development Association.
So, as things change through time, let’s start with a short recap
which I hope would provide some listening instructions
to those who are new to living decoloniality
and a refresher for our aficionados.
Living Decoloniality is a toolkit in form of podcast
originally created for practitioners and policy makers in the humanitarian and development sector.
As a practitioner myself, I was conscious of the fact that people in the sector
rarely have time to read reports
but that they are increasingly interested in podcasts
as a way to keep up to date. Time proved that was right,
as today we have more than 4,000 downloads.
The podcast takes as a reference a framework called the Colonial Matrix of Power
initially developed by the Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano.
I loved this framework when I first heard about it
because it helped me in identifying what for me
was the issue, the real problem of our sector.
Even though physical legalization of former occupied territories is almost over,
Colonial mindset is still permitting our practices.
The Colonial Matrix of Power is in fact defined as the structure
influenced by Colonial Principles and Believes
that underlies public and private lives,
also in former colonies, also among people that once were colonized.
Those Principles and Believes can be summarized in a number of binary dichotomies
where the positive element is represented by the colonizer
with all his stereotyped traits, the white, Christian, etero-sexual,
male holding a so-called “rational knowledge”
and promoting forms of so-called development.
The other element of each binary, the opposition to this positive element,
is represented by the colonized, the non-white, the non-male,
the non-etero-sexual, the non-rational, the underdeveloped,
the uncivilized, the beast, the blaspheme.
There is a beautiful paragraph of the book Black Skin White Mask
written by Franz Fanon in 1952
which describes the desperate willingness of the afro-descendent from Martinica
to look like the Frenchman, to speak like the Frenchman,
to think like the Frenchman.
This is the colonial matrix of power, or coloniality.
Why is this framework so important to me and so relevant for the sector?
Because it teaches us that in order to represent an alternative to the dominant
oppressive culture often replicated in the aid sector,
it is not enough to be part of a subaltern or oppressed group.
Fanon’s story tells us that in order to decolonize ourselves and our environment,
we must operate a conscious reflection on our subalternity.
In other words, we must recognize our positionality
and practice some reflexivity on it,
that is, understanding how it shapes the way we experience the world.
There is nothing spontaneous in decolonization, nor in decolonial practices.
They stem from a conscious and continuous attempt to change patterns
that have been naturalized so much to seem automatic.
Because of what’s said above, because decolonizing is a conscious
and continuous effort made by individuals in the relationship they have with themselves,
the environment and other human beings,
I structured my podcast in such a way that this conscious effort
could emerge in the words of those who talk.
At the beginning of each episode, after providing a little framework,
I ask every person I interview to introduce themselves.
This is not simply about listening, the main achievements of their curriculum vitae.
Giving the interviewees the possibility to introduce themselves
means giving them the opportunity to position themselves
and to create the basis for what they are going to say a few minutes later.
In other words, they tell us from which perspective they look at the world.
In the second part of this podcast, I ask my guests
to tell me what coloniality is for them.
I don’t mean to get definitions with this question.
On the contrary, I want to listen to practical examples,
the trigger of the story of how my guests awoke to this topic.
Answers go from very personal to extremely academic.
I don’t put boundaries.
The third and final question is about practices of decoloniality.
Obviously, they need to be linked to the second question.
In fact, I often ask my guests
how they overcame the coloniality that they experimented.
The practices described are diverse and they go from simple suggestions
to very structural tools.
This last question is for me paramount because it contains the real trigger
for change that I wanted this podcast to possess.
I always say that I don’t believe in the idea of replication and scaling up
because the word is too diverse to allow them,
especially a world that aims at decolonization
and that therefore recognizes the huge diversity among beings.
Scaling up and replication are popular because by ignoring uniqueness,
they save time and money.
I don’t believe they can be used for a decolonizing process,
but I do think that we can draw inspiration from others
and adapt their practices to our very specific context.
This is what Eugene Bardach called “extrapolation”
and I invite all listeners to use it.
I wanted this podcast to be focused on practices and examples
because I am convinced that declaring that the word is wrong
is not enough anymore.
There are people in the world who are already doing something very important
every day and we can learn from them.
There is one more thought that drove me to this direction.
Most of the examples I see around me are focused on decolonizing the sector.
Targets and indicators reflect this ambition to target the system,
but the system is made of people and by people.
As many, I believe that in order to promote change,
we need to focus on three levels.
The individual, the relationship among individuals, and the system.
If we want to decolonize the system we work in,
we must start with ourselves and with the way we shape our relationship
with the rest of the world, including humans.
This is why living decoloniality focuses on the first two levels,
hoping in this way to pave the way to the third one.
This third season has some new features.
Firstly, people and experiences have been chosen through a different methodology.
For the first two seasons, I had simply and spontaneously snowballed
through acquaintances, colleagues, people that had been recommended by other people
and more in general, individuals who believed in the potential of living decoloniality.
As it is natural, the motus of my snowboarding reached its end.
For this third season, therefore, I launched an open call through LinkedIn
and I received a reasonably high number of offers.
I realized that I needed to create a simple structure that would allow me
and the potential guests to understand if we wanted to record an episode,
but I wanted this structure to be somehow pleasant,
or at least interesting.
I wanted to provide the ground for meaningful encounters,
regardless of the final decision.
It took me quite some time, and I think it is normal,
because authentic and unique relations require time.
But I also think I managed.
So, all the guests of this season engaged with me in a sincere journey,
until we agreed on how their experience could be framed for the benefit of this audience.
Secondly, every episode is much more specific about the framework.
In the first two seasons, I was limiting such framework to the four macro categories,
generally identified by those who work on coloniality,
coloniality of being, coloniality of knowledge,
coloniality of power, and coloniality of gender.
In this season, together with my guests,
I rather dwell on specific working areas,
such as philanthropy, monitoring and evaluation, public health, governance.
This helped Matilde to provide an even richer list of recommended readings,
that as usual you will find the caption together with the link to the transcript.
The Center for Humanitarian Leadership is giving its invaluable support
through the personalization of the visual,
originally a present from Eugenio Nittolo
the broadcasting through its network,
and an open channel where I could share doubts and ideas throughout the creation of this season.
Finally, a note on technology.
Podcasts were born as a democratic tool, a tool for all,
and the relatively low need for advanced technology allowed many to share stories otherwise unknown.
Although now it is much easier to access the microphone or to book a studio,
I still want to keep this immediateness.
The podcast is mainly recorded through telephone messages,
edited throughout Audacity, an open source program,
and fully produced in my living room in Havana, Cuba.
This means that the quality of the episodes might be unstable,
and that every now and then you might hear dog barking,
a seller shouting, a truck honking.
I hope this will enrich your experience,
as it is a little window on my position and point of view on this world.
Enjoy the listening!


You listened to living decoloniality.
Practical examples of decolonial re-existence through the eight sector.
I am Carla Vitantonio and you can reach me through my Spotify and Spreaker channels,
or through my Instagram Carla Vitantonio.
This podcast was deliberately recorded with minimum technical equipment,
trying to preserve as much as possible the feelings and intentions of those who participated.
If you liked it, please subscribe and share it through your network.
Living decoloniality was produced in partnership with the Centre for Humanitarian Leadership.
The logo is a present from your Eugenio Nittolo