AO: This quote below by Keguro highlights a binary idea of collaboration as those who collaborate and those who resist. He suggests (building on feminist work) some conceptual alternatives that get at the inbetween spaces. He lands on indifference as a mode of agency, resistance/refusal. I am interested in thinking about how one might still formally be in a "collaborative" endeavor while emboding some of these aspects of indifference, etc. E.g. agreeing to participate in a research study but not showing up, ignoring phone calls, giving incorrect responses, etc.
Keguro Macharia: "A final wayward moment: primary school history taught me how to think about Africans. There were two kinds of Africans: those who collaborated and those who resisted. Later, I would encounter the native informant, a role that I could not not perform, and Gayatri Spivak offered me the language of complicity. Others entered the frame: the sly native, the trickster native, the desiring native, the sage native, the agential native, the undeveloped native, the homosexual native, the queer native, the deracinated native. Increasingly, I have been interested in the indiffer- ent native. This native haunts colonial archives and, if you check, recent NGO reports. This native fails to speak in the correct way. Chooses not to answer ques- tions. Rarely shows up. Shows up when not expected. Offers banal observations— perhaps about flying termites. Perhaps the indifferent native understands that the scorpion does not really care about conversation. Perhaps the indifferent native never has to say no. Perhaps the indifferent native simply wanders off." (page 188)
