Summary
EPIC-A and HEADS UP are two checklists from the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective for catching colonial habits inside well-meant work. As Vanessa Machado de Oliveira gives it in ‘Hospicing Modernity’ (2021), HEADS UP names seven patterns: hegemonic practices, ethnocentric projections, ahistorical thinking, depoliticised orientations, self-serving motivations (“invested in self-congratulatory heroism”), uncomplicated solutions and paternalistic projections. Each letter comes with questions to ask of a project.
EPIC-A is taught on the collective’s course ‘Facing Human Wrongs’ as a tool for spotting modern/colonial imprints in everyday behaviour. Its five letters gather habits such as exceptionalism (E), progress (P), innocence (I), control (C) and moral authority (A).
Rationale
One of us met EPIC-A as a student on ‘Facing Human Wrongs’. Both lists help us stay alert to “the deep dispositions we are enacting”, colonial ones here, in our own approaches and tools.