#41: Paths of Power and Paradox with Minna Salami, author of Sensuous Knowledge

Minna Salami is a Nigerian-Finnish and Swedish feminist author, social critic and currently Program Chair at THE NEW INSTITUTE. She is the author of Can Feminism Be African? (forthcoming Harper Collins) and Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone (Bloomsbury 2020) which has been translated into multiple languages. Minna is a leading voice of contemporary feminism, she has drawn over a million readers to her multiple award-winning blog MsAfropolitan.com.
In this episode, Andrea Hiott has a profound conversation with author and philosopher Mina Salami about her influential book, 'Sensuous Knowledge.' Discussing themes from her book, such as multi-perspectival thinking, paradox, and different ways of understanding power, Mina shares how she integrates various disciplines and explores knowledge beyond a binary viewpoint. The conversation navigates into the relationship between love, meditation, and sensuous knowledge, and revisits Minna's personal journey across different cultures and identities. This enriching dialogue is a must-watch for anyone interested in expanding their understanding of epistemology and embracing more holistic, embodied ways of knowing that open beyond polarities.

https://msafropolitan.com/
https://communityphilosophy.substack.com/

00:00 Introduction to Mina Salami and Her Work
01:21 Understanding Paradox in Modern Society
03:37 Exploring Sensuous Knowledge
04:44 The Distinction Between Sensuous and Sensual
31:24 The Concept of Double Consciousness
44:33 Meditation and Sensuous Knowledge
50:25 The Divine Nature of Poetry
51:41 Childhood Experiences with Automatic Writing
53:27 Struggles and Spiritual Interpretations
55:05 Discovering Automatic Writing and Meditation
01:00:02 The Concept of Power and Its Misinterpretations
01:01:44 The Mountain Metaphor and Diverse Perspectives
01:06:27 Language, Double Consciousness, and Feminism
01:11:15 Reimagining Power and Sensuous Knowledge
01:32:50 The Role of Love in Knowledge and Existence

Join the Substack here: https://lovephilosophy.substack.com/
Philosophical writings here: https://communityphilosophy.substack.com/
Du Bois and Double Consciousness: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-consciousness/
#perspectival  #sensuous #knowledgeispower #loveandphilosophy #holdtheparadox #andreahiott #minnasalami

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Sensuous Knowledge: Paths of Power and Paradox with Minna Salami and Andrea Hiott

 [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Welcome back to love and philosophy where we try and discuss the big subjects of life in ways that do not always fit to the usual categories and traditional divides that we've gotten used to in life. Today, I'm posting a conversation. I had this summer with Mina Salome. About her wonderful book. Sensuous knowledge. Which has influenced my own work. Minna is a Nigerian Finnish and Swedish feminist author, social critic. And she's currently the program chair at the new Institute. She is the author of can feminism be African, which is coming out next year from Harper Collins. And we'll talk about that then, but this conversation is about, mostly about since she was knowledge, a black feminist approach for everyone which was published in 2020 by Bloomsbury. Mina is a frequent speaker and lecture. She has taught at some of [00:01:00] the most prominent institutions in the world, such as Cambridge, Yale and she was also at the singularity university at NASA, which we talk about a little bit here. She talks about a bull falling into the water. Which was actually the title of her book. Since you was knowledge, you'll have to listen to know what I'm talking about there. She's a member of the club of Rome. The Royal Institute of philosophy. And so much more. I encourage you to read her book, look at her work. Here we talk about some very exciting, important ideas. For example. Double consciousness by Dubois, which I've talked about in other interviews. And written about on the Way and LIfeworld Substack because I feel it's an important part of the Canon of phenomenology that is often not talked about. And MENA actually changes my view here even more or expands it even more 'cause she applies it to the human relationship with nature. And how we are part of nature, but we also reflect on nature. The nature that's outside of us, but [00:02:00] that is also us. So I really love that part of the conversation and it reminds me of the movement that Bernardo Kastrup. And I were trying to describe recently in a conversation about consciousness. And also some of the conversations I've had about Hegel and. So there's similar themes here, but we also go into some very new territory. We discuss automatic writing, for example. And a new way of thinking about meditation. We talk about the relationship of Jesus and poetry. How birds are the real expression of freedom. There's so much in this conversation. I love this conversation and it's one of my favorite kinds of conversations to have where we just let it take us where it wanted to take us, but we still discuss very important themes of her book that both of us really care about. Sensuous knowledge. Is a joy to read. It's very emotional in a way it's very personal, but it's also very academic rigorous book which I think is a hard [00:03:00] combination and one that I really appreciate and respect. And of course that relates to this idea of paradox, how we might rethink what that word means. And open the space around it. So as to expand our thinking. And begin to think differently. If you want to support this. Project in any way, please sign up at the sub stack or the YouTube or anything that might feel good for you. I welcome. Mostly, I am just glad you're here I know sometimes some of these conversations are challenging. Some of them are warm and resonant. It always depends on what path you've come into the conversation from. But I really appreciate that we're able to explore such such a wide variety of topics here while at the same time grounding them in this idea of trying to think differently beyond either or categories. And open up to and expensive sensuous knowledge of the world 

Minna Salami: [00:04:00] The problem that we have in modern westernized society is that we think of paradox almost as something negative rather than generative and something that's actually just, a fact of reality, you know, things are paradoxical.

One of the reasons I think we look at things in such a binary dualistic way is because we are very focused on the kind of end destination rather than of seeing the whole thing, the vastness of it. 

 double consciousness is one of the most important and important or valuable ideas, philosophical ideas that we have as a human species. double consciousness vis a vis our relationship to what we call nature, which we Are a part of, we know the world of nature to a notable extent, but there are things that are [00:05:00] mysterious that we don't know about the world of, non human nature as we sort of clumsily refer to it as, and then we know the world of ourselves as a part of nature, as the human part of nature. And that is also a kind of double consciousness​the obvious truth here is that if we can look at the mountain from as many angles as possible, this metaphorical mountain, the, the truer and the richer, our understanding of it will be we will see the parts that are dead and airid and that will be okay and then we'll see the other parts to, and I start with that story, because I guess I wanted readers to immediately have a knowing that the book that they're about to read is.

Minna Salami: It's written by somebody who perceives themselves as that second explorer, as I do in, especially in the world of ideas and [00:06:00] epistemology and knowledge 

 But it was mainly through, going into into my mind and exploring.

Minna Salami: And when I was about, it's probably about seven years old or something like that. And what I'm going to say now is, uh a kind of a trick also for people who are struggling to learn how to meditate.

Sensuousness is not necessarily About physical pleasures. It's about a kind of full embodied experience. 

in the Yoruba worldview, knowledge is a divinity.

And it's one of the divinities that creates the world. Without it, there is no world making. 

if we can look at the mountain from as many angles as possible, this metaphorical mountain, the truer and the richer, Our understanding of it will be 

love is everything. Actually, love is the superpower that we don't. Love is the mountain. Love is the Love is the mountain 

[00:07:00] 

Andrea Hiott: Hi, Mina. It's so nice to see you and to meet you. Thank you for being here today. 

Minna Salami: It's great to meet you, Andrea. Thank you for having me. 

Andrea Hiott: So we're going to talk about your book, Sensuous Knowledge, which I just, I love it so much. It really moved me on a lot of different levels. And we'll get into some of that.

 But first maybe we should Start with the words and maybe then unpack how you came to writing it, but first this word sensuous It was really interesting me interesting to me that you define it in a different way than sensuality This has always been a word. I love a lot Sensuous and sensuality and you gave me something there with Defining it different and talking about Milton in the origin So maybe we could start there and you could explain what this word means sensuous for you 

Minna Salami: Sure. I also have always loved the word sensuous, uh, and sensuality. So my in making a distinction between the two, I don't mean to create any kind of hierarchy, but I [00:08:00] do make the distinction in the book and in so far as sensuous knowledge is concerned. And the distinction is that sensuality or, or yeah, sensuality and also anything to do with the senses, uh, in that regard has to do with bodily pleasures.

 And whereas sensuousness is not necessarily About physical pleasures. It's about a kind of full embodied experience.  That is how I look at it. Now there are countless debates over the centuries, or, you know, maybe not debates is not the word the right word. It's more conversations about the differences between sensuousness and sensuality.

And of course, the two get conflated quite often, um, in the beauty industry, for instance, I've come, since, since writing this book, I keep coming across, uh, you know, the ways that the word sensuous is used and it's used to describe perfumes and things like that. So it is, it [00:09:00] is to convey something quite sensual, um, which at the same time, I think you could also apply to sensuous.

knowledge, you know, it's, it's, it's, I, I, I like the openness and the vastness of the word. Um, and It came to me quite, uh, quite with quite a thud, uh, this phrase, sensuous knowledge. Um, and even though, as I say, it is a, it is a word that I've always liked, but it wasn't something that I'd ever thought about writing a book around.

Um, and I'd never paired it with knowledge. So when the title for the book came, it kind of came as a ready made. Uh, phrase. And I knew that it was something that I wanted to delve into and to try and put my finger on and explore. 

Andrea Hiott: I really like this distinction because having studied neuroscience and philosophy often, or just in general, right, growing up as a [00:10:00] human, you kind of separate the senses as if there's.

taste, and there's touch, and there's sound, and there's vision. So this word sensual, or senses, in the way that you describe, you go into it more, more, but it does already have a kind of, it's almost like a separation in there, of one or the other senses or something, right? Which is never really like that in, in real life, and I think this gets to a lot of what you talk about.

So it makes a lot of sense that you say sensuous, because then it's this whole, embodied all of it together. It's all the senses as it always is, but we often think of it as separate. So I just wanted to say that I really appreciate that distinction

Minna Salami: like what would it have meant if the book had been titled Sensual Knowledge?

You just said if it would have connoted that there is some kind of, uh, specific sense that I am referring to, you know, is it like knowledge of scents or knowledge of tastes? And, um, and yes, it is interesting. I mean, of course there are instances where [00:11:00] we are thinking of one specific sense. And I think that that's okay.

But yeah, I would go back to saying that when we say sensual, I think we just very much focus on the senses and sensuous when, when you use the suffix us, uh, O U S, it, it, it implies something that is more holistic, something that is sort of all consumed, uh, by this quality that the O U S is describing 

Andrea Hiott: I think this speaks like we, even what we're trying to do now by both of us saying, oh, we both are okay is something that you do really well in the book, which is.

open the space for paradox in a way, or what seems like paradox, or what might seem like opposites, or might just be different ways of viewing something similar. I mean, you start with this because from the very beginning we're grounded in nature, and and you're expressing this kind of way of which things can always be seen from two different ways, and those experiences might be very different, And depending on what they're [00:12:00] about, that's okay.

 Did you feel sometimes like you were balancing this kind of paradox or seeming opposition that you're showing isn't opposition? 

Minna Salami: Yes, absolutely. And I think that the problem that we have in modern westernized society is that we, we think of paradox almost as something negative rather than generative and something that's actually just, you know, a fact of reality, you know, things are paradoxical.

Life is paradoxical. paradoxical experiences. Um, and, and so, yeah, I am certainly trying to convey this, this complexity that is the paradoxical nature of experience. And also, uh, as you, you point to the kind of multi perspectival, uh, dimension of, of knowledge. Because in some sense, you know, there is the, the knowledge that is.

that you as a subject perceive, or let me just speak of [00:13:00] myself. So if I'm trying to, uh, grapple with something, um, I'm thinking of it mostly from my subjective position. But then I'm also able to think about it from a kind of wider perspective. Like how does that, how is that thing shaped by society or by the cosmos at large?

Um, and so there's already that kind of, double perspective. And then maybe you bring in lenses of identity of race and gender and, and just what mood you're in that day. I mean, there's just so many dimensions to the ways that we can, we can grasp at any particular thing. And within that there's obviously going to be a lot of paradoxes because if I'm looking at Um, my, my screen right now, and I'm thinking of it just from my subjective experience.

Yeah. Like I can see myself in the screen. I may start, assessing what is the, the light quality or something like that. Looking at it from, you know, almost the [00:14:00] perspective of the background of the room that I'm in and then zooming out further to like the whole city that I'm in or something like it just becomes this tiny little object.

And there's a paradox in, um, 

Andrea Hiott: there's this nestedness too, depending on what you want to look, where you want to look at it from. But I think, as you were saying, we often think of it as a choice that has to be made, the paradox, right? That it's, as you were saying, it's it's wrong, right? It can't be both things.

And also that there's only two things, , that we assume that, and you talk about this a lot in the book too, which I like with, of it being built into a lot of our language, or the Euro patriarch, this kind of over, this path that, that has been predominant for a lot of people that it gets assumed as the way it is or something, is almost built with that dichotomy that's not real but we don't question it , or if we're in a certain position we don't question it, let's say.

Minna Salami: Yeah, it's so, Very ingrained into how we look at things, um, which is [00:15:00] because, or one of the reasons I think we look at things in such a binary dualistic way is because we are very focused on the kind of end destination rather than of seeing the whole thing, you know, the vastness of it. And if, you know, if I'm going to somewhere very specific, um, or I want to understand something very, and of course, sometimes there's use for this kind of approach, uh, to, to kind of really just.

If we really want to just know the material dimensions of something, um, but we kind of apply that to everything. So if we want to understand politics or power or love or whatever it might be, we're also going with this very narrow focus into it and. When you go toward anything with, uh, facing it as though it were the destination, then what you do, like, imagine you're traveling somewhere, you have a destination in mind, you're going to have checked out the weather [00:16:00] prognosis.

And if it's going to rain, you bring your raincoat, you know, you prepare accordingly for that destination. You have specific tools and kind of assortments of equipment with you. Um, and that's how we're typically going into, into things that we're exploring. Whereas what sensuous knowledge is, is calling for is to, uh, traverse into that world with, I mean, one, a much broader toolkit, um, because if reality is paradoxical and multidimensional, then we cannot just come with the raincoat.

We need the sun hat and the sunblock and the welly, like we need all of it, you know? And so we need the intellectual scientific knowledge, but we also need to come with our Uh experiential, emotional, spiritual, um, appreciations of, of how to put our fingers on things. 

Andrea Hiott: And as you were saying that about what you, what you pack, I was also thinking of narrative.

That's an important [00:17:00] part of your book too, and how we might read some kind of narrative about the place and that'll influence where we go and what we see, I mean, You could explore a city that you've lived in forever from a completely different mindset if you've read something different.

 Then it opens up,, the way that person saw that city, for example. But before we get too much more into this, I brought two things up which I haven't, for listeners, closed yet. And that is one, how you came to this sensuous knowledge, right? Instead of, , how you think about knowledge, most people in terms of, what you talk about as, the head, right?

You have this, these two words, which I won't dare try to say properly, but, the head knowing and the gut knowing but I'll let you unpack it better and how you came up with this or how this hit you with a thud, the sensuous knowledge.

Minna Salami: Sure. Um, so the first thing to say is that the, the prism that I'm presenting, with the phrase sensuous knowledge did not hit me with a thud.

It's the, so this kind of Perspective that that's the world that [00:18:00] I grew up in. Uh, I would even go as far as to say that it's the, it's kind of the soul that I was born with. Um, it's, it's the way that I look at the world and always have, but I've never Uh, I guess I always felt like an outsider, until I was, you know, an adult and I'd already started writing.

And then I started to realize that actually, no, it's not that I don't get what the rest of the world is on about. It's that I see things differently. Um, and that probably is the very beginning of the, of the journey of this book, which has, which was, you know, in the making for, for many, many years, even though it, wasn't concretely in the making until the phrase sensuous knowledge hit me with a thud.

And, uh, and, and that happened when I was, um, I was visiting, I described some of this in the book. I was visiting the Singularity [00:19:00] University and the NASA research camp. And, um, And I, I don't know what it was about that environment, other than that, I was engaging with really fascinating ideas and people who care about ideas like I do as well.

 But there was a lot of discourse, like on some level, I felt very connected to these people. And on another level, I felt quite terrified of the worldview. Actually, that's putting it mildly. I felt fucking scared of the world view that they were championing. I mean, this is sort of the Silicon Valley mindset and I realized that's again where my two worlds collide.

And so I was one day swimming in the pool that was there at the research center. And that's when this this phrase came almost like, you know, a bull had fell into the pool from from the sky. and I went back to my room and immediately started jotting down my thoughts and I knew that it was going to be the title of [00:20:00] my book.

Um, but the worldview is a Yoruba one in my case. Um, so my heritage is Yoruba. Nigerian and Finnish, and in Nigeria, I come from the Yoruba people. But this kind of worldview features commonly across the African continent and in many other indigenous communities. But in the Yoruba worldview, in the Yoruba worldview, knowledge is a divinity.

And it's one of the divinities that creates the world. Without it, there is no world making. And Uh, and this, this divinity is called Ogbon, and when the gods give Ogbon to, to the Yoruba people, they say, you have to have two types of Ogbon, and this is Ogbon Ori, which is, , head knowing, knowledge of the head, if you like, or intellectual knowing, and then there is Ogbon Inu.

Which is, uh, internal knowing. So in, [00:21:00] in Yoruba, it would be something like that. So it's like knowledge of the gut in English. We could say, um, I don't speak Yoruba by the way, but this is, through conversations I've had with, with people who do, um, and, and the gods say that, you know, in order to be wise, uh, one must possess the two, uh, and to only possess one of these types of knowledge is to only be half wise.

 And so. You know, even though Nigeria is a, uh, you know, was a British colony is still a sort of neo colonized country. And so the educational system is not exactly indigenous, but this kind of, uh, um, cosmological prism was one that was very present to my sensibilities when I was growing up in Nigeria.

Um, and I always was. I always felt cold, um, and, and not even felt cold, but I always just interpreted the world in [00:22:00] that way, uh, in, in, and when I say in that way, what I mean even further is through this multi perspectival view, um, I, and, and it, I guess it also came from being, um, somebody who is, uh, from dual racial, ethnic, also religious.

language backgrounds. Um, and so for me, there was never, there was never a sense of a clear path ahead, which there was for the people, many people around me, in Nigeria. And later when I moved to Sweden as a teenager, that was always the case. Um, I think today in today's environment, it's more and more common that I think most people almost in, at least in urban cities around the world would say that they don't have a sense of a clear path.

You know, life is [00:23:00] more confusing now. I'm more 

Andrea Hiott: aware of many possible paths. I guess we could take my 

Minna Salami: Yeah. And also I guess with the internet, you know, the way that it's been up so much knowledge and information and people have more choices that they need to make on a daily, if not like a minute by minute basis, 

Andrea Hiott: overwhelmed by paths, possible paths.

Yeah, 

Minna Salami: exactly. Even if they're 

Andrea Hiott: not open to us too, right. It's more we know what's out there in a different way, but I'm really interested in this because you say everyone around you had a clear path. Was that, yeah, can you help me understand that better? I kind of understand, but it's more just people assume that they, this is what they will be when they grow up kind of stuff. 

Minna Salami: Yeah, it's that kind of thing. And I, I guess, um, I mean, Lagos, I grew up in Lagos.

Okay. So you were in the city. Okay. Um, and the world's biggest, um, and it's a very cosmopolitan city. So there are people from all around the world in [00:24:00] Lagos. However, it was still homogeneous enough. For me to feel different just by virtue of being from also from Finland, uh, and having that multiracial background, um, so like my family, my cousins, um, my aunties, my uncles, people like that, uh, who, whose both parents were not just Nigerian, but Yoruba because we have many different, um, ethnic groups in Nigeria.

Um, you know, there's a sense in which you are going to follow the the customs and the culture of your group of people, which to me was from day one, never an option because who whose tradition was I following the finish because your mom was from my mom was from Finland. Yeah. Um, and I never lived in Finland, but I did have a connect like we traveled to Finland frequently.

And, um, and, and yeah, as I say, I mean, these are the things that are like the concrete. Things about my identity, but [00:25:00] I think there was something even deeper within me that was, um, that had that sense of not belonging to any specific thing or any specific path. Um, and, and of course it's a, I mean, it's been something that has, enriched my life in many ways, um, and continues to do this thing of always having to, like, I've had to forge every single path that I've taken for myself.

Um, and that's enriching, but it also in different phases of my life was really difficult. And, you know, particularly growing up, uh, you, you're always an outsider. Um, you know, quite fit in. Um, but what it does then to one's approach to knowledge is to, it's this is a similar thing, right? Like, there's nothing, I never take anything at face value, you know, people tell me, Oh, so this is how women should be, or this is, uh, even the, you know, this is the, the, [00:26:00] I was thinking just today, um, to give a concrete example, uh, of something random and maybe a bit controversial, um, because the sun is finally out and I was contemplating whether or not to slap a bunch of SPF on my skin.

And, uh, and I, you know, normally I do, but then I was thinking, wait a minute. I mean, Africans who I think scientifically have, uh, skin that ages, the slowest. And, uh, also I know that there are some cancers that, you know, we don't develop in as great numbers and so on and so forth. And like, we don't use SPF, um, we use Shea butter and things like that, which have some natural protectants.

But anyway, that's just a very banal example of everything that comes to me, uh, Is always something that I have to question. You can 

Andrea Hiott: see it from another perspective, right? I think I've always thought of I [00:27:00] think you use this and I like the kaleidoscope, instead of either or, that there's this kind of multi perspective way in which you can see things 

and as we are using language, it's very hard not to talk about it as one or the other in all these ways, right? Like we're talking we're as if everyone around you had one sort of path and you had a different one, but of course that's not really true. But in another way, it is because you have this very unique position, um, which has to do with a lot of things.

Not only that your mom came from Finland, but so it's like something you notice, right? When you, when it's different from, Um, in a certain way from those around you, it does make you feel different. Like what you're saying with the SPF, I mean, you have another perspective that maybe other people don't even think about. And then it opens up a complexity of which one is correct or something, or there's, there's a kind of, not, not an isolation, but like you said, outsider a few times, in these, Yeah. more intimate examples of like when we're kids and we're growing [00:28:00] up and we feel that there, there can be this, where you, you see that you have a different experience. I'm trying to get a maybe some moment in your life when you started to feel that or I'm wondering like, did you read a lot as a kid?

Were you reading poetry? I know there was music. I'm wondering how that hit you then and how you dealt with it.

Minna Salami: Yeah. Um, so one thing to say first is that what we're getting at here is ultimately a kind of relationship between absolute, what we take as absolute truths and power, um, and how this kind of multiple consciousness, um, that came to me Whether it was almost like imposed by life in a sense or, uh, or that I also sought out is a way of transcending abuses of power that can that can come with imposing a binary worldview [00:29:00] on people and individuals and collectives.

Um, so as a, as a child, I was, um, already consumed also actually with. The notion of power. I was very I was very bothered by the power dynamics that I saw around me. You know, especially those to do with gender. I could see that women had inferior positions in society. Um, and Also, the same applied to girls and boys, you know, in my school, and so on.

Um, and, but at the same time, I think, I mean, to identify this, this other dimension of why I was, um, interested in, uh, multiperspectivality aside from my heritage, it was also because I was really attuned with the spirit [00:30:00] of mystery, Um, and I guess growing up in Nigeria blended itself to that, but I again there I had, um, had several near death experiences as a child.

Um, some very uncanny ones, like I was kidnapped and, you know, things,

things. Yeah. Um. Yeah. Yeah. And I myself was just really intrigued by, um, yeah, by, by things that would be deemed mysterious by society at large. And so one of the ways that I, I guess that I grappled with the duality between my heritages and then between the mysterious and the known, which of course, I wouldn't have, Or which I wouldn't necessarily have put that way back then,, was really, I mean, yes, I read a lot, but it was mainly through, going into my, into my mind and, and exploring.

And when I was about, [00:31:00] uh, it's probably about seven years old or something like that. And what I'm going to say now is, uh a kind of a trick also for people who are struggling to learn how to meditate. But I would play this game where I would challenge myself to see how long I could go without a thought.

 And it wasn't until I started meditating as an adult, I realized that that's what you're 

Andrea Hiott: doing. I've 

Minna Salami: been doing that throughout my childhood because I've been getting I would have just , yeah, and it was just about challenging and sort of competing with myself. 

Andrea Hiott: That's remarkable because that's not an easy thing to notice that you're having thoughts, right? That's part of what meditation does. You start to notice you are having thoughts and separate, understand you're not your thoughts. So it's amazing you already had that so young. Yeah. It sounds like you had a lot of circumstances that might have, I don't know, not forced you to do that, but it sounds like you.

Minna Salami: I think it was, I mean, you know, if a psychologist listens to this, they might say, yeah, [00:32:00] clearly this child 

Andrea Hiott: was going 

Minna Salami: through 

Andrea Hiott: some stuff. Well, I mean, if you were kidnapped, that's a big thing. 

Minna Salami: Yeah, yes. Um, exactly. And that was just one of kind of many things. I also had a lot of happy moments in my childhood, but yeah, in the 

Andrea Hiott: book you 

Minna Salami: describe a lot of 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah.

A lot of those too, but also, and then there'll be a moment where you're going to school and there's dead bodies or something. So that's kind of what I mean too with this paradox and trying to almost invent a new language, right? That maybe sounds like that was part of that process too when you were already quite young is it's not that there was just what this world or this world, it was like, there's so many different ways of.

Of seeing or being or 

Minna Salami: yeah, and this is why when I, um, you know, much later came across the work of, uh, people like W. B. Du Bois, who wrote in the early 20th century, um, about what he called . And he was, talking about the, the racial and [00:33:00] maybe even specifically the African American, racialized experience as one in which Black people in the U.

S. developed what he calls double consciousness, uh, I think he defines it as something as like, like this uncanny ability to be able to, uh, understand the white world and or the black world and the white world, right? Um, and Later you could say that black feminists, uh, ev evolved this thinking to, I don't know if anyone actually, uh, writes about a sort of triple consciousness, I'm sure someone does.

Uh, where you are also looking at the gendered world. You know, you can under understand the female world and the male world. Mm-Hmm. . , because you are in the position of, of the quote unquote oppressed. . And I think, I mean, I talk about double consciousness also in my book to some extent, but since writing it I've come to realize that actually, , double [00:34:00] consciousness is probably one of the most important and important or valuable ideas, , philosophical ideas that we have as a human species.

I totally agree with you. I'm so glad you said that. I think, I mean, we talk about it a lot, but we really undervalue the power. I don't know if we 

Andrea Hiott: even talk about it a lot. I mean. 

Minna Salami: Maybe it's in some of the sort of black circles that I'm in. Yeah, 

Andrea Hiott: I guess because I'm thinking of having just done philosophy degrees or not just but in my life done a lot of philosophy degrees that he's never brought up and it's or, or, you know, writing about phenomenology and stuff.

And I just think that's one of the most, important, crucial ideas, but I don't want to go on and on. I'm just saying thank you for saying that.

Minna Salami: No, I appreciate that you also can see that because, uh, because that's, it's another form of sensuous knowledge, the seed for, uh, people like me who then can come along and write books like Sensuous Knowledge.

You know, it's really appreciating This ability, uh, [00:35:00] we have as humans and to see things from multiple perspectives, and but also then connecting it importantly to a political dimension. And what living under the auspices of our Political structures, uh, does to this ability, how it, how it brings it forth or suppresses it.

If one is in a position of privilege or, you know, and these are discussions that I think are really very much of the 21st century still. 

Andrea Hiott: And we need them so much. And maybe it is worth Me bumbling a little bit here because I did just write something about, about this in a way and it, it, it struck me reading you recent, , after that, I mean I'd written it, but you express it better actually, that's why I brought up the kaleidoscope because I was trying to think of double consciousness and Du Bois in terms, because I had just, I haven't put it on the channel yet, but I've had a few conversations actually about double consciousness 

but anyway, I was thinking of it as trying to open into a kind of prismatic [00:36:00] way of seeing the world or a kaleidoscope as you describe, um, instead of this, this double, but it's so hard to talk about and, uh, especially from my position, right? I almost feel like I don't have the right to even talk about those words.

But then I also see. them as so crucial and even maybe more crucial in terms of American philosophy than a lot of other stuff that I have to learn in school. So this is not going to be right the way I say it, but when you grow up in a certain way and you're seen in a certain way, which I think Du Bois expresses very well Then you, you do have to see the world from both the sides, whereas the other person, the white person in this case, doesn't, right?

They don't. So there's a kind of reflection or something that's going on that's somehow kind of not, not like a good experience. We don't want to say this is good. And yet it's expanding your consciousness. It's expanding What you are in a way. So I don't know how to deal with that in the right way in language [00:37:00] without it sounding like I'm saying one thing is good or bad, or that, , we've talked a lot about paths opening, right.

And sometimes when you, like right now, there's so much in your book, so many things I read, so many things I've thought about that are similar, but I can't just say, oh, we we have had the same experience because I can't say my path is yours or that I know anything, what it's like to be on your path.

But how do I , Still have those moments of real identification and being so moved by it and learning from it at the same time and not try to say, Oh, it's the same as me. Because we have had read the same book when we were a kid or something, I know what your experience is like.

Cause of course I don't, do you know what I mean? How do you hold, , how do we hold all that? 

Minna Salami: I do know what you mean. It's really complicated and entangled with all kinds of narratives that really we should be seeking to move. away from. Um, so I think one of the issues is something that you, you touched upon, which is, [00:38:00] uh, the idea that double consciousness is a negative experience.

Um, and even though, of course, it does come from a very painful and traumatic history, I would want to challenge that it isn't a negative experience for several reasons. And one would be that, um, because it is Embedded into that kind of narrative. Um, I think that is part of why, uh, quote unquote, like white dominant, um, academia or any sphere of philosophy or culture or whatever, um, struggles to.

To talk about like why it doesn't become as important a theory as it should be, because it evokes these feelings of like, Oh, that's that then, you know, that engages with the kind of racial history. Um, and my position as white or black or whatever one might be. So that's, that's one entanglement that it for sure has.

But if we [00:39:00] can realize actually Toni Morrison, and I do write about this, even in my book, she doesn't call it triple consciousness, but she talks about how. Um, the kind of privilege she sees in being a black woman. Um, because she says something along the lines of, uh, you know, it means She doesn't have the naivety that white women in her, um, and she is sort of forced to see the world more, more clearly.

And as you said, like, of course, that's actually a kind of a trait, a feature in life that expands your life rather than diminishes it. The more clarity you can have about the reality that, that you're in. You are surrounded by. Um, and I, I think that's what double consciousness is about in itself. When we, when we remove it from, it's, um, from sort of the, the narrative [00:40:00] of race, which of course we can never, we can and should not fully do, but you know, knowledge is something that is and can never be owned by any one group. I firmly believe that. What I think is important is to acknowledge the roots of, of how one comes to an insight, you know, and, and.

We arrived at the insight of double consciousness because human history was so ugly in terms of how it created racialized structures. And if that, you know, we cannot separate the insight of double consciousness from that, but the actual insight in itself and what it is trying to convey is not something that is only relevant to the black experience.

Otherwise, you know, you could say, you know, Are black women talking about it? I mean, Du Bois was a man, right? And so, of course, a person, you know, a white woman can have double consciousness in another context. Um, I, one of my, my ex boyfriends, uh, a white British man, um, you know, he came to, [00:41:00] to Lagos with me and He experienced something that he had never experienced before because he had never been a minority white person somewhere.

And that created some kind of double consciousness for him, you know, where, um, and I think collectively as a human species, we are experiencing double consciousness vis a vis our relationship to what we call nature, which we actually Are a part of, you know, and so we can, we know the world of nature to some extent, um, to a notable extent, but there are things that are mysterious that we don't know about.

The world of, uh, non human nature as we sort of clumsily refer to it as, um, and then we know the world of ourselves as a part of nature, as the human part of nature. And that is also a kind of double consciousness. [00:42:00] And it comes with all of its, uh, you know, murkiness and confusion also in the language, you know, like the fact that we talk about.

Human nature and non human like, you know, if, if we can grasp how truly we just are nature, um, we wouldn't speak like that because like a tree would not say I'm a non river tree or mountain is not like a non tree mountain. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. it reminds me also in the book you talk about the Morrison talking about, I can't remember the phrase right, but race free, but race specific.

Or something. Writing. Is that connected to this? I haven't thought about that in a while. I love that so much. Yeah. It's so wonderful that, she's so amazing, gosh, the way she puts words on things because I feel like what you were just describing is we're trying to have a nestedness or a kaleidoscopic understanding of consciousness, right?

And the doubling. is kind of the way we recognize that process, but it's not double. It's not either or. a lot of philosophers write about this, [00:43:00] right? I did my thesis on Hegel and there's the whole dialectic and then, but you have the marks and you have, but it's in Plato.

It's in, all kinds of ways in which there's a process of this doubling, but it's not either or, and I feel like in your book, you start opening us up to that triple kaleidoscopic thing in one way feels like through Morrison, right? She was doing it, wasn't she? 

Minna Salami: She really was.

Um, and perhaps in the most powerful way living in, you know, 

Andrea Hiott: it was sensuous knowledge. That is the 

Minna Salami: most, um, powerful way. But what I was going to say was through novels, like insofar as writing is concerned, because 

characters, you know, she really showed how multi perspectival double triple consciousness is embodied in people and her own person, 

like the 

Andrea Hiott: bluest eye that it's just, 

Minna Salami: yeah, I think 

Andrea Hiott: that's what I mean by living it.

You know, there's you, when you read that book, you live it. No matter where you're coming from, you're going to live it differently [00:44:00] depending on all you've been through. But yeah, that connects too to the sensuous knowledges and what you write about narrative of that. That shift that you're showing in your book too, that's a lived attitudinal shift that comes through 

Minna Salami: yeah, I mean ultimately it's about, grasping how alive everything is and when you do that, you become so curious about everything because it's, it's fascinating.

It's endlessly fascinating how everything, you know, from a stone or a branch to the conversations that we have about race or gender or anything, philosophy, there's just this, this. Surge of aliveness that is seeking to, to make its way and to be part of the conversation. And this is why I think, you know, really grasping that we are nature

um, is [00:45:00] part of what makes this so it kind of unlocks the amazingness of the aliveness because we, you realize that, you know, even this conversation that we're having right now is nature having a conversation, 

Andrea Hiott: I mean, with itself, and at the same time changing itself, that's another part, the dynamic, dynamic, 

Minna Salami: yes.

And we can see this more easily when we look at. Trees or rivers or stars and we can see that they're not static. We see that fluidity, but we don't allow that to ourselves because of the dominant knowledge system that we're following in which we do see ourselves as static. We think that we're having these kinds of conversations to Referring back to what I was saying in the beginning to arrive at some kind of destination and, and that there's, you know, there's sort of [00:46:00] set truths that we can arrive at.

Whereas we are being just as fluid and shifting as any other part of nature and just as impactful in, in how we're going to shape the future. 

I think if that is the case, then what we can ask ourselves is. Are, am I contributing to that shift in a way that aligns with what I believe, what I have come to understand is of value to nature as a whole, or am I not doing that?

And that's where we can, you know, we can use that as some kind of compass and kind of, uh, assessment, if you like, of, is something like double consciousness valuable? Yeah, I would say because it is. It's contributing with so much value to how we are a part of nature and how we are shifting nature.

Andrea Hiott: Gosh, there's so much in there I want to talk to you about. Maybe the thing is to go back to the meditation too, because of [00:47:00] when you were seven, but then I think later in your life, it also became like a practice where you're aware of it as meditation. And I feel like that's one way that you notice what you just described that you're, that you are a part of nature.

Where you're. in this nested dynamic scale of nature and it allows you this awareness or presence I think is a word that maybe you use where you can participate in the way you just described. So I want to hear about the meditation of the seven year old you and then and later and also towards you know where we started which I haven't described yet which is these explorers on the mountain it's not the destination but it's this exploration and the paths and so on I want to get to that after but first 

meditation in your life 

Minna Salami: yeah, um, so I was meditating as a child without knowing that that's what I was doing and I had a meditative experience that I would now know to label things like astral travel or past life [00:48:00] connections and things like that, which are memories from my childhood meditations that feel You know that are as momentous in my life as some of the memories of things that sort of actually happened.

And I think that's so much because they came as a complete surprise to me there was playing this game with myself, and all of a sudden I was transported into what I knew was my past life and it was. It's kind of like, how do I even, you know, who do I talk with about this? Because it felt so big, but I also immediately knew that this is like too mystical or whatever to, to bring up as a conversation.

 But yeah, uh, I mean, fast forwarding, I guess the thing I should preface and say that meditation is a very difficult thing to talk about.

 I mean, I've been meditating for [00:49:00] over 20 years now. And, and I find that, you know, first of all, you go through so many different phases with your meditative journey, but What I have found to be consistent is that whenever I try to talk about it with people, I'm aware of just how silly it sounds.

And it's, it's just something that is ineffable and should almost be left or should always be spoken about with the knowledge that it is quite ineffable. It's like talking about spirituality or. Or sex, good sex, you know, like you can't, you can't describe it. It's something that you just have to experience.

But what I can say is that, um, I think meditation has been immensely valuable to me because I am this person who is so curious about everything and doesn't take things at face value and in a world that is. Patriarchal and capitalist and the wheels are forever [00:50:00] spinning around this sort of patriarchal capitalist machine.

It is really difficult no matter how much you have gained, you know, kind of embodied sense of. transformation from looking at the world differently, it can become really hard to center yourself in that because you're just whirled away into this, into the structures that govern. And meditation is, for me, it's a, you know, it's a political act, , as well as a spiritual one, because it's, it's where I reconnect with my core self and my, my soul and my destiny and my heritage, my lineage, my ancestors.

And it's, I don't mean by that, that I'm thinking about these things, because obviously then I wouldn't really be meditating, but just by reclaiming that space where I'm just dedicated to spirit. Um, I am [00:51:00] politically aligning myself with other ways of knowing other than the dominant Europatriarchal one.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, that's really powerful. Do you, like, how would we relate that to sensuous knowledge is it a kind of knowledge, I guess, because the sensuous knowledge that comes as you read the book, of course, it's almost, it feels to me a little bit like what you're saying with the meditation.

I mean, you've written a book about it in it and you express it, but, um, there's almost like a practice that expresses it. Does that make sense? Yeah. 

Minna Salami: Yeah. Does make sense and I love that you used the word practice and maybe even it could be praxis because essentially it's not 

Andrea Hiott: praxis. Yeah. 

Minna Salami: Um, I mean it's also in some ways, an ineffable thing to speak about which is ironic, considering that I've written a book about it.

But you know there's, yeah. Words, uh, are not enough to convey the, or put it this way, in my life, the [00:52:00] book is like the least thing about my life that applies to sensuous knowledge, nor like it's more how I live and how I look at the world and how I look at how my relationship to myself and to nature is. Um, and so yeah, in that sense, um, meditation is.

That's absolutely like, that would be at the sort of top of things that express sensuous knowledge more. And this 

Andrea Hiott: this poetic, this word poetic comes up to where you can with the praxis maybe or something. and the etiquette. Poetry expresses things without, poetry expresses things using words, but not saying them.

Minna Salami: Oh, I love that. Yeah. I mean, yes, absolutely. Because poetry is it's like God visiting us. And, you know, it's like, you know how, uh, people say that, yeah, like, if came back to earth, then people wouldn't even know it, [00:53:00] um, poetry is kind of like that, you know, it's like Jesus and every other divinity and deity being around us and we don't even engage with it.

Um, because it does, it does something with words. That transcends words and transcends language, and one of the ways that I think we know that is by, uh the way that you are automatically stilled down when you read a poem, like if you're reading a poem that you like, because you could read a poem that you're not connecting with and that would be great.

If you're reading a poem or hearing or whatever, a poem that you, you really like, you cannot actually be hyperactive. It's, you know, it just instantly makes everything else disappear and you are, you and that poem are one. There's kind of no distinction in that moment. And what else, I mean, music does that as well, but in terms of writing, uh, it's, it's rare, I think, in [00:54:00] other forms of writing for that to happen.

Andrea Hiott: That's a great way to connect it to that meditative thing too. And it, it makes me think of, back to your childhood again, isn't that when you also had this automatic writing sort of, uh, experience. And to me, when I was reading that also felt. I wondered if that was a kind of poetic feeling or something to, uh, I don't know, was that in your childhood when that happened to you?

Was that That actually was 

Minna Salami: the kind of start of my meditation practice as an adult, so I was In my early 20s and, uh, yeah, when that happened and I was writing in my, in my journal, and then what happened was that I was suddenly writing very fast, um, in handwriting that wasn't quite mine, expressing things that I didn't know I had written.

ever thought about. Um, and that could potentially, you know, still be okay. But when I decided that I wanted to stop journaling, I [00:55:00] couldn't. Um, and eventually, and I could only write in like one direction toward the right. Um, so I was ripping out, first of all, I couldn't stop. So I was using my left hand to try and stop my right hand.

Wow. But it couldn't. It felt like my right hand was just a different, you know, entity. And then my right hand was also tearing out pieces of paper so that I could just continue toward the right. And so at the end of the session or seance or whatever, my floor, my room floor was covered from one corner to the, to the last in paper and just this ferocious scribbling.

So no, it didn't feel poetic. It felt terrifying because at this point, even though I'd had this during my childhood, I'd had, you know, this openness toward, [00:56:00] uh, the mysterious. I perhaps therefore also when I was around nine, 10, uh, despite my dad's Muslim, and I'd grown up with that around me, but I asked one of my aunties who was a Catholic, if I could join her church.

And And I kind of went down that path. And so throughout my teens, I was not exactly a practicing Christian, but I had Judeo Christian religion very much at the top of my head. And so when this happened, it was the first incident in which That was really challenged for me. Um, but it was also the only view, the only, the only source of understanding spiritual experiences that I could analyze it from the religious one that is.

And of course, what that was telling me was that I was possessed by something evil. So that, you know, that's what I thought that this is, this has got to be like an evil spirit. Um, And I was so scared. I spoke to my dad, who's the only person that I feel, [00:57:00] um, my dad also has this sort of spiritual calling to where the unknown and the mysterious, and he's the person I've always been able to talk to about, uh, mystical things.

And. Yeah. And he, but he was in Nigeria. I was in Sweden at the time. And so for a couple of years or so, I just actually lived in existential dread. I thought I was scared to journal. I was just scared of myself. And what then happened was that I started going to like shops where they sold, uh, some like mystical books.

And, and that was when I was recommended books by other people who had done. Experience automatic writing and through that, 

Andrea Hiott: did you know it was a thing before you found this book? So was it, were you just like, Oh gosh, 

Minna Salami: there was one shop in Sweden where I, um, where that I went to, it was kind of the only shop where you could buy, you [00:58:00] know, gemstones and cards and stuff like, um, and she, the woman who worked there was somebody I confided in.

I told her what had happened and she wasn't like a mystic or something. So she, she gave me just very hands on. Uh, she just said these words like, Oh, that sounds like automatic writing and that was like an aha. I'm like, Oh my goodness, give me everything, , that can say about this. And it was reading those books where I encountered, uh, people who meditated and that was how I then started meditating.

Andrea Hiott: And that sort of helped you get a little bit of distance from that part of yourself, would you say, or some kind of agency or presence with it, or just to be able to see it, hold it in a space other than being it? 

Minna Salami: It, what it gave me was. A tiny bit, a tiny ray of a chance that maybe it was something powerful rather than something negative.

I was thinking 

Andrea Hiott: that word power the whole time you were saying it and [00:59:00] also when I brought it poetic, it's not that I thought the experience was poetic, but what, what poetry tries to Yeah. Yeah. What poetry conveys without saying it, there's this in this also this connection to nature in the way you were describing it.

There's something there. I'm trying to, it feels, you're right, you're right. It 

Minna Salami: is also not just saccharine and beautiful, no, no, 

Andrea Hiott: no. And it can be very dangerous and, 

Minna Salami: yeah. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. 

Minna Salami: So I think you're right to, to call it a poetic experience. Not 

Andrea Hiott: really, but do you see what, that was what I was trying to get at, that I was almost even thinking of Rumi or something of this burning burner and burn, this like thing that almost consumes you, but wakes you up.

I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. 

Minna Salami: Yes. It really, I'm so grateful that whatever happened then, and you know, as I say in the book, there are perfectly. rational experiences, um, to what happened, you know, maybe I, maybe I got myself into some kind of trance state. [01:00:00] I don't know, you know, I'm open to all that now, but what matters is that at the time I wasn't at all, like there was nothing rational about it for me.

I had been possessed by something and I'm so grateful in a sense that that was how I read it, because otherwise I wouldn't have. Gone on this pursuit of trying to understand what was happening to me. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, this is great. And I'll try to now link back to some ties because what you just said about maybe it was you psychologically dealing with something that we might think that is a paradox versus the spiritual mystical experience, right?

And it's not, because I think at this time in your life, you were going through a lot. I mean, you, you had moved. to Sweden, you, this is what in the book you talk about where it's the first time you realized you're black, in a sense, because you didn't have to think about it before and you were getting like, there was a lot of change right in your family, your dad's far away, you're in a new situation.

Um, there was some difficulty. I mean, you could probably tell it better, but the point is Obviously you had a lot to deal with then. Plus it sounds [01:01:00] like you were already you were feeling a lot anyway, just as you're human Nate, like as you are in the world. So that's somehow for people who already feel a lot, it can be even more, but I guess the point is it, if that's how you dealt with it psychologically and if it's mystical, don't have to be opposites.

Minna Salami: Yeah. In quotation, because yeah, I mean, it's just to offer that double consciousness again, that I'm aware that that is also one way of reading the situation, but yeah, because it did push me into what has become my life path. Then it cannot also just be read in that way. Of course there was,, an element of, of.

of mystery to it. You know, why do even just in the very mere fact of why do things happen to us? Why do some things happen to us and not other things? I mean, that's mysterious in itself, you know, so 

Andrea Hiott: it's all very mysterious. And that's like you were saying that that when you're in that place where you can recognize that the whole world, the leaf or everything becomes something of [01:02:00] awe that you can learn from but the reason I brought and the reason I said that is not I mean in your book you express what I just said but I was more for people who are listening to where it might sound like either or Actually the whole idea of sensuous knowledge opens that up in a wider way So I encourage you to read the book and and understand But the reason I also bring it up is because we were talking about all the also there's all these paths in your life that if that have given you a way to contribute to this.

And it's tied to power and I want to get to the way you re, you talk about reorienting that word. But before we do, I brought up at the beginning that you start the book with the mountain and there's two kind of explorers who explore the mountain and they, I want people to read the book, but in general they have very different experiences of what this mountain is.

And it's beautiful because from the beginning we have this idea, which you've talked about been taking us back to, and I want to kind of try to make explicit now, which is the way we encounter the world and our experiences of it can't just be like [01:03:00] snapshotted of that moment. 

Our whole development, goes into our knowledge. 

But I also see, I mean, there's two people in that story, but we've already seen that you were living so many different paths, right?

Minna Salami: Right. Yeah. Um, there's, there's also more layers to this because there's also, you know, I grew up with many languages and language being something that has been central to our conversation and my work.

Andrea Hiott: And that being another way you learn perspective. That's another. Yeah. That's another consciousness in the double consciousness way we were talking, I think. 

Minna Salami: Exactly. I mean, double consciousness. I'm sure somebody has looked at linguistics through, I really hope so because 

Andrea Hiott: it 

Minna Salami: makes so much sense. But yes, I was speaking Finnish with my mother and English with my dad.

And then my parents spoke German to each other to add, you know, because they met in Germany where they both studied.

So they lived in Greece for nine years and my mom didn't speak English. She'd come from Finland to Germany. Oh my goodness. So [01:04:00] when they moved to Nigeria, you know, you can't really, it's difficult to switch languages as a, in a relationship.

So they always spoke German. So, um, there was also that. And yeah, um, but in terms of the mountain story, it's, you know, to, to summarize it, it's, um, kind of what's on the other side of the mountain. So we, we have one, one explorer, there's a story about riches, uh, in a mountain, and we have an explorer from a village who goes looking for this, these riches and comes back many months later and says, Oh no, there was nothing there.

It's arid, it's dead. Um, and then there's this other explorer who's Can't let go of the story of the riches of the mountain and they go looking for them and then they come back months later and they're like, Oh, my goodness. It was so flourishing and abundant. And basically, she at this point, I revealed that this other explorers that she [01:05:00] has seen the other side of the mountain.

And it's not that she is right. and he was wrong or vice versa. It's just that they were looking at it from different angles. And the obvious truth here is that if we can look at the mountain from as many angles as possible, this metaphorical mountain, the, the truer and the richer, Our understanding of it will be we will see the parts that are dead and airid and that will be okay and then we'll see the other parts to, um, and I start with that story, because I, I guess I wanted readers to immediately have a knowing that the book that they're about to read is.

It's written by somebody who perceives themselves as that second explorer, as I do in, especially in the world of ideas and [01:06:00] epistemology and knowledge making, um, you know, the, the, the world of ideas, um, is forever, I mean, still. Today, you know, we, we are, it is so dominated by white men and we are missing.

It's not that, you know, some of these ideas are fantastic. Um, I mean, so much of Hegel's work, you mentioned you study Hegel, like so much of it is mind blowingly good, but so much of it is not. Um, and also it is one, one way of seeing the world, you know, it's, and, and when we have, when you have like a thousand Hegel, I mean, you don't because.

People like Hegel stand out, of course, but when you add all of these white male thinkers together, the worldview that we have is so utterly dominated by actually a white and a male experience. And we don't know that. It's like, you know, especially I think part of the [01:07:00] curse of our times is that because we've had so many conversations about this, we think that we are living differently, but we're.

Still following exactly that same path to knowing. And so I wanted to, yeah, to make it sort of clear and, and to, for the reader to appreciate that what I was doing was to bring the story about ideas from, from different angles. I think the 

Andrea Hiott: path is a great Way of thinking because it's like so many people have walked that way that it seems like the way to walk I mean so and because now we can get to power a little bit. Because so many people because so many people have walked that path We don't think of the fact that those in power created that particular path and those in power were white males, right? I mean, I'm generalizing, but in this, this bigger space that most of us live in. You just walk the path and you don't [01:08:00] realize that there's probably a many other ways of exploring that mountain or seeing that mountain or what, what's important about the mountain, so to speak. So how do we, bring in power here? Because this is a really important word, so I think of it as it's showing us that knowledge is a kind of journey, um, it's a movement, it's dynamic, there's many ways of being that movement.

It's not just this thing that we thought of as like, stuff in our head, it's this lived experience, in the book, we're learning this, right? And we're getting into this practice of thinking of the world in this way and what the sensual knowledge is. And then you kind of move into some real examples of thinking about it. I don't know if example is the right word, but we think about power and beauty, would you like to set that up a little better before we talk about power how you think of power relative to sensuous knowledge? 

Minna Salami: Yeah. Um, yes, because the thing is that we, I think it's important to first, set the stage by saying that [01:09:00] one of the problems with power is that those who have it, whether it is due to their race or their gender or their capital or whatever it might be, or us as a species, vis a vis other nature, is that they think that the other wants what they have.

That there's, I mean, that is, I think, the This is very complicated in a sense, but because it sounds so straightforward, but in some sense that is the ultimate barrier to freedom from both the position of the oppressor and the oppressed is that there's this, there's this sense for those who have power that like, what I have is what the other wants.

Um, and that makes it very difficult. To have a conversation about something like power or [01:10:00] beauty, from the get go, because there's this idea on both sides that like, Oh, I want, I want power the way like I want those, uh, I want to be one of those CEOs at the fortune 500. 

Andrea Hiott: We think we know what power is. Um, but it's actually a definition that's been like a path that some people built for us. This idea of dominance and coercion, for example, which you talk about a lot.

We assume that's kind of power. We haven't thought about it though, in the same way that we've been talking about here and this nestedness of, we haven't meditated on it, so to speak, or doubled it. 

Minna Salami: At this value, we need. To stop doing that and, and it's so hard to stop doing that because people who have it think like, even if they want to give it away, they're still thinking that what I have is what you want.

Let me tell you like a story of, uh, this is probably common for many kids, but when I had a bird in a, in a cage, right, as a, as a kid, um, and. I didn't have it for a long time until I was like, [01:11:00] no, I can't, it can't be in a cage. I'm going to set it free. Um, and I, one day, you know, and it, it took a while. Like, I remember just sitting there looking at this bird and it was there.

I don't know, was it an hour or something like that? Um, before it eventually flew out. Um, and when it flew out of the cage, I will never forget this feeling that I had, um, which, you know, in, in this scenario, I am the person, I am the entity with power, um, and the bird flew away and it didn't once look back.

And I felt. As much as I wanted to I've been watching it going like, fly, fly, fly. But the moment I did that and it didn't care, you know, that indifference is that is power. That is what I am trying to describe as power. What we do in our societies [01:12:00] is we automatically assign me with the power, or even the bird, as it is flying, but it's not power is the end if it is that freedom to just exist.

So yeah, we need to, we need to sort of bypass or transcend this, this prism. That's why I want to stage with that. But yeah, ultimately, it's 

Andrea Hiott: beautiful. I gosh, and when you're talking about the bird, I mean, that's a beautiful story. And it makes me reminded me of in the book, when you talk about Rosa Luxemburg, I think there's a quote where she says she feels like a bird.

Um, and, and it is a kind of a real power that she's feeling right in that moment. And also, I think she talks about being when she's in jail, she feels free or something. Yeah, she 

Minna Salami: says she writes these letters with her best friend. Yeah. Who's one? My friend, but she, um, you know, best friend slash comrade and, Mm-Hmm.

Uh. And she says, I don't have any identity anymore. Like if I have, because her friend has asked [01:13:00] her, do you still identify with the socialists with the Leninists, whatever, you know, and she's like, I, the only thing that I had to identify with, if anything, is the bird that sings outside of my prison cell.

Um, yeah, it's, it's really powerful and beautiful. And that's 

Andrea Hiott: that power and that joy. And, um, yeah, so we don't, I mean, you, you, you set it up very well looking at. past ways that people have literally sort of spoken about power and put it into a formula and it Ends up being about getting people to do stuff that they didn't want to do in a way, you know It's like how much can you coerce someone?

How much can you dominate them? And if I mean we're talking about the paths right and and language and these language is also a path There's these things that we follow without knowing we are following and that's I think what we're trying to get at with the double consciousness to become aware of it and that's what your book is doing and and you and you and then you can change this you can understand power in the way you just described it uh [01:14:00] but it's so hard to get out of it's almost like our very thoughts have been molded by that path of power of even with something like social media or you know that dominance that coercion is part of how that technology is built you know 

Minna Salami: And also with activism, a lot of activism that we're seeing today very much still follows that model of, uh, you know, there being a destination, uh, uh, in a very specific way that we get there.

And it's all very much about material structures. And again, there's a time and a place for all that. Absolutely. We cannot all be like in double consciousness, multi dimensionality all the time, or there are some concrete things that would not happen. Um, but it is so limiting and I, you know, that is the, the ultimate sort of prison that Western thought has.[01:15:00] 

Put pretty much, you know, the majority of humanity and right now is that we're living in this limited black or white film when actual reality is, you know, this multicolor forever shapeshifting why, uh, abundant, you know, just sometimes really ugly and dark and shadowy place, but also so much richer and magnificent than we can see through this black and white prism.

And, and I think You know, we really need to get beyond just trying to express what that is. I mean, that's also important, but to really seeing that, you know, it has to be about the actual experience of seeing, like, you know, you look at your, your phone or you look at a tree, whatever object it is, you look at yourself in the mirror and you just see so much more than what.

Conventional [01:16:00] knowledge wants you to see. And to do that, I think, you know, there needs to be, that's where feminism comes in and must be mentioned at least once. You know, that's where it comes in because that's, I think to do that, you need a streak of rebellion. You know, you need to have some part of you that refuses to conform and refuses to abide to authority.

A little bit of 

Andrea Hiott: revolt, I think is the word you use, though you describe it in a really. 

Minna Salami: Yes, that's the particular way. Yeah. And that's something that, you know, in a lot of spaces where people are talking about complexity theory and this, that, and the other, I think that's the ingredient that's missing. I mean, those spaces can be fascinating.

Like, you know, people are really tapping into, to, to, to the richness that exists beyond the conventional and dominant knowledge, but that spirit of revolt that feminism brings into the picture is a really crucial ingredient, I think. 

Andrea Hiott: And that's the [01:17:00] sensual or sensuous, I guess, knowledge, isn't it? I mean, that's this lived attitude that isn't static.

 Like what you were just describing, that feminism, that revolt is a lived, ongoing, ever changing stance or attitude, or you talk about the necessity of relation.

I think it's closer to that, right? It's, um, but when we try to do something like science or, when we try to make sense of this in an academic setting, so to speak, then , it feels like you can't have that there, right? That's back to that weird paradox or something, , like, how do you see how to resolve this? Because you've lived in both worlds. I mean, you know all of this, and you also teach, and you're an academic, and how have you held that paradox of, of revolt being necessary and that ongoing lived, you can never measure anything.

And then also, of course, needing to put things in words and theories and talk about theories and so on.

Minna Salami: Yeah. I think it has to do with [01:18:00] understanding one's intentions. and not only once as an individual, but You could say for feminism as a collective movement as well. Because we're not, you know, feminism is now very much an academic venture, as much as it is still, I would say, To an equivalent level, a kind of activist movement.

But we're not going to escape that. Like that's the fact of it. And the fact of it is also that those two things are in tension because academia is very patriarchal, the way that, you know, and it's very Euro patriarchal, how it is structured, you know, the whole thing about disciplines, for instance, you know, that's, that's, that's a kind of travesty for feminism, you know, if you think about the core purpose of being anti patriarchal, [01:19:00] the idea that You know, that feminism becomes a discipline and that people can just specialize in that rather than engaging with the kind of whole experience of gender, of womanhood, man, all of these things.

Um, and yet at the same, I'm not denouncing disciplines. I can see again, their value and measurement there's a, there's, you know, instances to catch a flight, like, thank God somebody has measured time so that I don't just go and sit in an airport and like randomly wait, uh, or train, car, whatever.

Um, so clearly, you know, we need measurement. We need, uh, I think there's a lot of value if somebody Um, is very passionate about a specific discipline, but feminism should not be looked at in that way, even while we are developing the feminist school of thought academically. So that's what I mean by [01:20:00] being aware of one's intention.

So like I had a conversation recently with a A feminist, uh, lecturer and at a university in Hamburg, where I am, and she was saying to me that, uh, you know, she said, could we, how did she put it? She, she was basically kind of asking me if there would be, if I would be interested in opportunities to collaborate.

But she framed it as such that, you know, because she is working in academia and I had been sharing with her that I'm trying to, you know, I'm working, I'm writing sort of nonfiction, creative nonfiction that hopefully appeals to a broader audience. And so she framed it as, as though maybe there's no space.

It's for collaboration because it's like different worlds. And it struck me, especially afterwards, I was thinking about it a lot. It wasn't, you know, I'm not throwing shade at her. I think what she said, I understand where she was coming from, but it just struck me that how far we [01:21:00] have moved away from the purpose of feminism, which of course we can collaborate.

Like it doesn't matter what discipline, what, if you're in law or, you you know, philosophy, whatever, like as feminists, there's a mutual interest that we should be able to talk about. Um, and because I have the intention of, uh, you know, a feminist revolt, uh, at my core, always like that's my compass. I can see it that way.

Whereas if I had the intention to become a feminist professor at so and so university, then Maybe I wouldn't think about that, what to me feels like an obvious truth. Um, so I think intention is really important. 

Andrea Hiott: That's so wonderful. And by intention, I think it gets back to that thinking of things as trajectories or paths that can't be, that are continuous.

That your whole, everything we've talked about has kind of gone into, it's not just one path as we've talked about. noted and it's not just, it's [01:22:00] nested and there's scales and it's, it's um, very complex and there's multi layers and all of that, but it is continuous in the sense that it's, from, you know, it's your kind of path that no one else has because no one else is you.

And, um, that for me feels like a kind of intention too, or a kind of, that we have to take that into consideration always, or the reason I brought up measurement in that way, which is a little, I don't know, what cheeky or something, cause I know you weren't against it, but I feel like that's important the way that you do talk about it, because measurement can sound like it's objective, But the measurement is also related to intention, isn't it? I mean, we could think of those two people who are exploring the mountain as kind of measuring it or assessing it. And they have completely different ones and neither is wrong because the mountain is so vast and dynamic and, and different. And I guess that's what I, because measurement and assessment are important, but when we hear those words, we think they're objective.

I think is what I was trying to bring out. And I wonder what you think about that. Yeah, 

Minna Salami: I [01:23:00] mean, that is a huge issue with your absolutely right, um, or your right to bring that up because that is probably what the problem, the two problems with measurement as I see it is. The first one is that we want to measure everything.

Um, so it's okay to measure certain things, but there are things that maybe measuring is not suitable for. Like, um, I mean, actually even power, I would say, but certainly something like love or freedom or justice. Peace, things that we're really grappling with in our times. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, it almost doesn't make sense to put that word on, on there, or does it?

Minna Salami: No, like, I mean, how do you measure justice? Well, in a court of law, like, but as a phenomenon, like, how do you measure love? Is it some kind of equation? Or, you know, I guess that's 

Andrea Hiott: why I'm trying to get out here, bring out because we can measure those things, but they're just measurements. They're like [01:24:00] one little kind of, they're one way of, almost like a little snapshot of something that's much like it's like a little path on the mountain, right?

That the mountains always changing the path itself is always changing like you can take that little picture of the path or something. I don't know how to say it and it can help you maybe better understand how to navigate, but you can't say that's the mountain, you know. Yeah. 

Minna Salami: And that is the second.

 Is that we then believe it. Religiously, we, we, we believe that when somebody says, Oh, I have measured this, that that means that they are right, you know, and that's what it is for everyone or something. And that goes back to like how we're seeing the world in black and white instead of technicolor, because we are Just following the measurements and missing everything, uh, all the other ways of knowing a thing, the experiential ways, the affective ways, the spiritual ways, the emotional, [01:25:00] like, you know, there's so many other ways that we could try to understand justice, for instance.

Um but we only want to understand it the way in which it can be measured

Andrea Hiott: and relative to what you bring out in the book, which we won't, we have to go soon now, I realize, but In terms of power, I think that's an important thing that you bring up, or that comes out, is because you start to talk about power in a different way, , right now power is seen as that way, like measuring, or dominance, or it's very much based on as if there's one correct, powerful thing, then there's coercion and dominance, but you open up branching and jouissance, that's a whole, that's all the stuff we've been talking about, which is real power I feel like, but nobody seems to be aware of it. 

Minna Salami: Yeah. Um, no, I mean, the thing about measuring is not only that it's not only that we want to measure power, and people do, you know, there's all these A equals B, whatever A equals B, then B has [01:26:00] power, like all of these kinds of equations.

So there's that, but it's more that if we live in a world where everything can be measured, then we can have more control, which is the ultimate goal of your patriarchal structures, whether they're patriarchal or whatever. They, this, this. Desire to control and you cannot control things. That cannot be measured at least not as straightforwardly as you can control things when you can put a formula on them.

And so, when we do that then with power, we have to then create a corresponding narrative that aligns with the measurements so like if, if, if B can control A, then B has more power. Okay. So now we apply that to, uh, an authoritarian leader or to the husband in a heterosexual marriage or whatever, you know, they can control, they are B in this, in essence.

Um, so what I'm trying to do with exusions is [01:27:00] to, uh, think about power as something that is, Um, enabling that rather than contriving and diminishing, um, power as something that is generous and you know, gives life, gives abundance. Like there's no reason that we could not see power that way. I mean, in fact, it's, I don't, I'm not even speaking about this hypothetically.

No, no, no. Like the 

Andrea Hiott: bird in flight is, or it's, It's, it's, is, I mean, that's, it gets weird trying to talk about it, especially because we still use the language that's built on the old way of thinking about power. So I even worry, you know, people hear the word power and they are thinking of it in those old terms because it's defined that way.

But what you're really suggesting is, is, it's, it's actually real power I think of. It's like the power that we've been taught is power isn't actually power. It's not that bird in flight. But that exists, [01:28:00] and it's actually there, and there's a shift, which I think your book shows is a shift of cognition or knowledge.

Once we understand that that's a whole body, lived experience, not something in a head or a brain, that's a kind of shift that shows you that power, or that, what does it do? It doesn't show it to you, but you, you, you fly, or you realize you're it, or, you know. 

Minna Salami: Yeah, you've, you feel it, you see it, and you know, it's not that complicated.

Like try anybody listening, you know, just think about when you've enabled someone else or something else to do something that that thing or person or entity was desiring to do. Um, and that quality, you know, you can do it in just offering a seat to somebody on a boat. But like, that's. A kind of expression of power, but once you start to really [01:29:00] meditate on that, that gesture, that that spirit of what is happening, you can see it everywhere.

Everything is empowering. I mean, look at the way, you know, that fungi are empowering forests and clouds are empowering right? Like, you know, you see it in every little tiny thing and it's power is so beautiful. It's, it's like this. Magical superpower that well, maybe superpower is, you know, it's in this sense of power, but yeah, it's it's really something that we can tap into in a, it can enrich our lives or give our lives, a quality and a texture of joy and.

meaning, uh, and, and direction, if we start to look at it in a different way, whereas if we continue to look at it the way that it has been theorized and how it is offered to us, it [01:30:00] really makes our lives feel like suffering, you know, those moments where we feel, and everybody feels this in some way, some of us more because we feel it also structurally, um, as well as maybe in our independent lives, but we all have.

moments where we feel that we are being disabled in some way of like fulfilling what we want to do. And if we associate that with power, if that's how we think about power, then we're caught up in this game where we're miserable. 

Andrea Hiott: Absolutely. It makes me think of the dance or of, um, there's this, there's this way, which I felt in the book, there were moments where I felt very emotional, but I wasn't quite sure why, and I think it's because of that, that, that it's written as a, in a way that's a, a practice, um, and kind of like as you just, people listening can do, but that's also why I brought up measurement too, because I think part of what you just described, the way we feel when we feel unworthy or disabled is because we don't measure up, so to speak, but nobody measures up because [01:31:00] that's a false Dichotomy of thinking there's something you have to measure up to or that that's power or that that's beauty.

So it's this weird loop or spiral that we're in of trying to measure up and feeling inadequate or something and I kind of hear you saying or what it kind of felt felt in the book is Relax out of that or dance out of that or whatever, you know, meditate out of that or something and Then you feel this real power, which is the it's it's what we're part of You know when you relax into it with presence you feel it Yeah.

But that's not easy, right? To have the presence and relax and do it, but, but we can do it. 

Minna Salami: Yeah. It's really not easy. Um, but one way to try and do it is to, is this thing of multi perspectivality. It's not gonna, you know, it's not like some magical tool, but. When you start to think about things through different [01:32:00] prisms, um, it's, it kind of is a, is a journey toward, uh, this kind of empowerment.

Because one day you wake up and suddenly realize that you're not in this competitive scarcity mindset anymore because You can only be in that mindset when you're looking at things in this very narrow way. Um, but when you've started to see that, well, okay, that isn't that one way, but there's another way to look at it.

And there's another culture that views it different or, you know, that there's these layers to everything. It becomes increasingly difficult to, to be in a mindset of, of negative competition is perhaps a better word. And so that's. It's something that I, I really encourage, because it's, again, it's this kind of ineffable thing with sensuous knowledge.

So you can't give a methodology per se, but one way is like when you're confronted with something that [01:33:00] you can't really deal with or grappling with, grappling with something is to, you know, just the simple exercise of like thinking about it through your different ways. Through your senses, um, through your emotions, if you're up in your head, uh, through your body, maybe you need to move, um, and then you can take it, you know, one step further and do some research about it from like a different cultural perspective or a gendered, racialized, whatever, you know, um, And yeah, and it's and it's not this is not research because of course people do that's not you know you have a thesis and then you declare what theory or using it's like doing it in real time, and with quite mundane things, you know, like I think the practice has to start with.

Quite mundane. I often give this example of like what you have for breakfast, you know, if somebody listening can think about what they had for breakfast, the bread, if they had bread, like what, [01:34:00] you know, with how we think about it, we would be able to, we would typically describe it with, you know, calorific intake, nutritional facts, whatever.

But, you know, you could also think about the texture of the bread, how it felt on your tongue, describe the taste, the, um, the sounds that you heard around you when you were eating breakfast. Um, yeah, uh, the, the tradition of. The baking, you know, does it have a specific tradition, those kinds of things. And when you start thinking of mundanities in that way, then you eventually can start applying it also to bigger questions and issues.

Andrea Hiott: That's beautiful. Yeah. That's a good way. I see what you mean. Just grounding it. And even just your way back to sensuous or sensuality of, of being present, you, you can, the way I think at the beginning you said you could think about the screen, you could think about the background, you could think about the room you're in, the neighborhood, There's something amazing [01:35:00] about just noticing that we don't have to think in that either or.

way and we can start to look at life just in everyday situations in that scaled nested way and then you can start to look at yourself and other subjects in that way maybe. So that's really beautiful. Do you kind of just to end I want to come to this idea of love because this is love and philosophy and I feel like we're talking about love a little bit here or that this experience of love I don't know is it a kind of also like a relaxing into that powerful Or beautiful space or, or how do you think of it? Is it motivating this? 

Minna Salami: Yeah, I mean, I think love is everything. Actually, love is the superpower that we don't. Love is the mountain. Love is the mountain. I mean, it is because love is, attention and intimacy, you know, love is when you love something, you pay it so much attention.

You want to, you [01:36:00] want to know everything about it. You want to know what it's grieving, thinking, eating, living, and And that in return is intimacy. That's, that's what it means to be intimate with something, is to really want to get to the core kernel of that thing. And yeah, the kind of the, the connection or the difference, the synthesis of, um, attention and intimacy is, is what love is.

And so when we think about, uh, things, when we, when we, when we think about knowledge, with love in that way, you know, we become so curious, so attentive, you know, it's not just that, Oh, somebody tells me that this is a, you know, this is a piece of knowledge about XYZ. No, I want to pay attention to that. I want to, You know, I want to be intimate with it.

And, and I think what challenges us [01:37:00] quite often with this kind of, uh, you know, it's a, it's an, it's eros, it's an erotic, um, relationship to not, because like even that breakfast, that bread that you were, if you, if, if you eat it, if you have your breakfast, the way that I described, you are having a kind of erotic, Experience and of course, you know, people you're not going to have this every morning necessarily.

Um, but it's possible to actually find that eros even in something that mundane. Um, but yeah, when you do when you do that with. Whatever knowledge it is that one is in pursuit of, um, if you just, if you just apply love in the way that I've described to that, you will be practicing sensuous knowledge.

That's what I, that's what I mean by it, really. And, and, you know, there is a, there is darkness to love. This always needs to be said. It's not, I'm not talking about something romantic here. Intimacy and romance are very different things. Romance is, you know, myths, [01:38:00] lies. It's sort of fabrication of a narrative.

Can be fun, but that's not the deal. This is, you know, sometimes what you're going to, the knowledge, when you encounter knowledge in that way with love can be really painful. I mean, if you're looking at racism or sexism as you know, topics that I've. I've been working with approaching those topics with love for the knowledge that is embedded into them is a hell of a journey, you know, it's not, it's not going to be easy.

And that's why I think people don't always do. That's why we don't encourage this, this methodology. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. That's a very important thing that you brought up because It can just sound like we're I mean you talked a little bit about how the tree or the your breakfast or everything can be this sensuousness and this It's a different quality.

It's a different way of being in the world. Right. And [01:39:00] you, you're, you, you said a few times, you can't live that in every moment. I understand what you mean. I often think like, cause when I'm in that state, it's like, you can't hardly even go shopping for groceries. Right. Because the vegetables are so beautiful.

And you're just like, look at the fractal shape of this broccoli. It's incredible. You know, I mean, it's you, life does slow down or something. And, Sometimes we have to do things, sometimes we have to do things that require a different pace. However, I guess what I'm saying is it changes your way of being.

 It too is dynamic and, and nested, right? So when you start cultivating that, you learn how to sit with life, and as you're saying, life is sometimes very violent and, um, painful. And, um, we've all had those experiences to different degrees and some, some in the book that you describe are just, you know, there's a lot to sit with in life.

Um, but I guess love can help us do that too, right? In this space of presence and also not identifying so fully with those experiences or that. Yeah. [01:40:00] I don't know.

Minna Salami: Yeah, no, absolutely. It becomes a kind of, if we go back to the Yoruba philosophy and with the divinities, and one of the things that I also talk about in the book is like you you, you have an Ori in Yoruba, which is your head, um, and.

The Ori is a very central concept in Yoruba philosophy, because you sort of, you carry your head with you and everybody, every person has a specific head, which is usually tied to the Orisha, which are the deities. Um, so like my Orisha is Yemoja, she's called Yemanya in Brazil and, you know, she's, anyway, um, but it means that you have a sense of, It's a kind of destiny in a way, like, you know, you're, yeah.

Um, and you find yourself in situations where you're not necessarily putting your head, your Ori at the forefront, but it's always there because it's on you. It's, you know, it's, it's part of your [01:41:00] body. Um, it's like that. So you're. Uh, you're, you're not in every, sometimes you have to rush into the shop and out and you can't focus on the fractals and whatever.

You can catch a glimpse of it. You know, you walk past the aisle and you're like, yeah, the broccoli over there.

So there's a, there's an awareness of it that you carry along with you all the time. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. Well, I will finally let you go. I really appreciate you spending a little more time than we thought, and I really appreciate the book. I'm just very grateful to you. Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you want to be sure we say, or I know we, there's so much, I mean, I had identity, I had your blog, I had, but you know.

Time. 

Minna Salami: All I want to say is, um, thank you for, um, this very enjoyable conversation and for engaging, reading my book so, so closely. It was, I really appreciate that and I'm glad you liked it. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. My pleasure of course, . [01:42:00]