Beyond Extraction: Co-Creation, Participation, and Knowledge Production
Within positivist research frameworks, human experience is frequently mined to produce the appearance of evidence-based knowledge, with the researcher seeking patterns that confirm pre-existing hypotheses or theoretical assumptions. My research takes a different approach. Rather than pursuing confirmation, I embrace the possibility that artistic practice can generate multiple, contingent, and plural interpretations. I do not regard this openness as a methodological weakness; rather, it reflects a relational understanding of knowledge production informed by quantum theory, where meaning emerges through entanglement and interaction rather than through fixed subject–object distinctions. In this sense, participants are not objects to be observed from a distance but active contributors to the unfolding of knowledge itself.
This relational methodology shapes the way I work within conference settings. Rather than positioning myself as a speaker addressing an audience, I take a seat amongst participants and consciously relinquish traditional hierarchies of expertise by developing the work live and collectively within the space. There is a vulnerability in this process that destabilises the binary distinctions between artist and audience, knower and receiver. Knowledge is not transmitted in a one-directional manner but co-produced through encounter, dialogue, and participation. I do not know the outcome in advance; rather, the agency, presence, and relationships of those involved become constitutive of the live artwork itself.
Extractivism is conventionally associated with the large-scale appropriation of natural resources; however, critical scholarship has increasingly demonstrated that its logics extend beyond material extraction to encompass the appropriation of labour, social relations, and knowledge. Walter Rodney’s seminal analysis in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa provides a foundational critique of economic extractivism, illustrating how colonialism systematically transferred wealth and productive capacity from Africa to Europe while simultaneously producing enduring structures of dependency and underdevelopment (Rodney, 1972). Extending this critique, Sumi Madhok interrogates the coloniality of contemporary knowledge production, arguing that extractive relations persist through academic and institutional practices that appropriate subaltern experiences and epistemologies without meaningful reciprocity or epistemic justice (Madhok, 2021). Similarly, Luis F. Angosto Ferrández conceptualises extractivism as a broader social relation embedded within neo-colonial political economies, emphasising how contemporary extraction is sustained through asymmetrical power relations that govern access to territory, resources, and forms of social reproduction (Angosto Ferrández, 2023). Taken together, these perspectives demonstrate that extractivism should not be understood solely as an economic mechanism of resource removal, but rather as a multidimensional structure of domination that organises the unequal circulation of wealth, authority, and knowledge across global hierarchies. In this context, my practice can be understood as an attempt to resist extractive modes of research by privileging reciprocity, co-creation, and relational forms of knowledge production over the extraction of experiences, narratives, or data from participants.
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These extractive power relations are not confined to colonial histories, resource economies, or institutional knowledge production; they can also manifest within the university itself. Doctoral research is often framed as a process of mentorship and intellectual development, yet the supervisor–student relationship is inherently shaped by asymmetries of authority, recognition, and institutional power. Within such hierarchies, there is a risk that doctoral students’ intellectual labour, emerging ideas, and creative contributions become vulnerable to forms of epistemic extraction. Critical scholarship on academic labour has highlighted how the boundaries of authorship, ownership, and attribution can become blurred when supervisors, institutions, or more established scholars exercise disproportionate control over the circulation of knowledge. In some cases, students may experience their research being appropriated, insufficiently acknowledged, or redistributed within academic networks without their full consent or participation. While such practices are not universal and often occur through institutional cultures rather than individual malice, they nevertheless reveal how universities can reproduce broader extractive logics in which knowledge becomes a resource to be managed, circulated, and accumulated through unequal relations of power. From this perspective, resisting extractivism requires not only a critique of colonial and capitalist systems but also an examination of how authority, recognition, and intellectual ownership are negotiated within academic institutions themselves.
Rodney, W. (1972) How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications.
Madhok, S. (2021) ‘Coloniality, political claims-making and the analytics of extractivism’, Contemporary Political Theory, 20(4), pp. 695–714.
Angosto Ferrández, L.F. (2023) Extractivism and Society in the Global South. London: Routledge.
