Paraphilanthropy: Giving Money Its Freedom Papers

“Decolonial gestures need fugitivity, a longing for the non-legible, and support for social experimentation within undercultures of practice.” A response to “the intelligence of the hour”, encouraging those engaged in “decolonising philanthropy” to consider “paraphilanthropy”: “making sanctuary for the atypical in times of turbulence… a site convened to the co-inquiry of how new worlds might come to be… not as a set of fixed practices but as an inquiry dispersed across networks at the end of the world.” But also to beware “iatropower” (change, but on ‘our’ terms) with its false promise of “a site of purity from which to regulate the world”, which ultimately serves to maintain the “plantation of the human.” Three practical suggestions end the piece, led by an invitation to humble inquiry: “The work of decoloniality is not about knowing the answers; it is about staying with the tensions of not-knowing long enough to be changed by them.”