Julieanna Preston, Narration Sickness and the Undoing of the Word, Architecture Thinks edited by Braden Engel, Giorgio Ponzo and George Themistokleous, Journal of Architecture 2025 (forthcoming).

This journal contribution is presented in three interdependent parts:

The performance video retch (1) is a conceptual and physical gesture to decolonialise the act of writing and to undo the patriarchal structures and ways of thinking so deeply embedded in English language expression. The performance practices the ‘doing’ of theory from a feminist material and embodied approach. Operations of cutting, mouthing, spitting, soaking, tearing, trimming and salvaging are made upon excerpts from Paula Freire's book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2) which introduced attributes and impacts of the 'banking' education model and the way it induces ‘narration sickness.’(3)

 The performance video featured as an invited keynote presentation at Fielding Architecture Symposium: Feminist Practices for a Decolonised Pedagogy, convened and curated by Emma Cheattle and Catalina Mejia Morena, Brighton University, UK, June 2019.(4) This interdisciplinary symposium asked: how is architectural history / theory constructed, from which positions, and from where its content derives; how can its construction be critiqued and informed by other disciplines such as feminist geographies, environmental psychology, cultural studies, technology and science studies, queer theory and urban geography amongst others; how should architectural histories and theories be constructed in the future?[v] The performance video was accompanied by a piece of performance writing that, once again, invested in the values and protest of the video and Freire’s message by evading the explicit and declarative nature of abstracts to summarise or serve as exegetical CliffsNotes. This writing piece has been advanced and features here as the second part of this contribution.(v)

 The third part is a text that contextualises and reflects on the other two parts in an effort to underscore the significance of opening oneself to the discursive modalities of decolonisation, ultimately to take responsibility for the oppression that it instils and the liberties it promises.

[i] Photography and editing production by Oscar Keys 2019.

[ii] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (UK, USA, Canada, Ireland, AUS, India, NZ, South Africa: Penguin Random House, 1970).

[iii] The performance video can be viewed in full at https://vimeo.com/336266837.

[iv] Thank you to Emma and Catalina for permission to represent the work in this journal issue.

[v] Adapted statement from the Call for Papers: https://eahn.org/2019/01/cfp-fielding-architecture-feminist-practices-for-a-decolonised-pedagogy-brighton-24-25-june-2019/