The article ‘Committing to decolonial feminist practices of reuse’ is an effective critique of contemporary principles and practice of open access calling into question the overemphasis on governance of knowledge objects while preserving the notion of the individual author as natural owner vested with ultimate authority to determine rules of access and engagement. Highlighting the limitations of licencing mechanisms that continue to operate in liberal humanist ways, the authors revisit open access methodologies through the lens of feminist and decolonial thinking as a way to expand the possibilities for a more ‘relational, intersectional and decolonial’ engagement.

Reviewing diverse and innovative OA licencing approaches, including those that seek to embed decolonial and indigenous methodologies, the authors contend that licencing through continued exclusion and discrimination in various ways continues to fall short of its implicit promise to deliver freedom of access to knowledge objects. The article concludes with a discussion on the authors’ ongoing experimentation with Collective Conditions for Reuse that steers away from the limitations of licencing practices gesturing instead towards a prompt or invitation that nurtures more responsible encounters. Drawing from Miriam Aouragh’s notion of ‘radical kinship’ the authors propose that such a feminist and decolonial engagement could pave way for a more thoughtful, situated and relational encounter with knowledge production practices that remain attentive to embedded power relations and considerate to the consequences of such engagement.

As a situated encounter, the refreshing promise of moving past ‘licencing’ of knowledge was an invitation to engage more freely with the article. The persistent guilt of trespassing that accompanies any use of licenced material was replaced with a responsibility to contribute purposefully drawing on my situatedness so potentially improved conditions for reuse may emerge through further reflection and deconstruction.

The article’s positioning of feminist and decolonial methodologies (even if the former seeks to learn from the latter) left me wondering if the separation implied that some non-western feminisms were excluded from the feminist methodologies adopted by the authors. It also made me wonder if the article has missed the opportunity to further critique how western feminisms through their continued preoccupation with the white human figure are at risk of reproducing the same exclusions in their approach to knowledge principles and practice.

To elaborate, the collective conditions for reuse that the authors propose may risk being indifferent to the category of the non-white woman as Lugones, Mohanty and others have argued, and therefore overlook other emergencies and urgencies that remain the preoccupation of the marginalised subjectivities that CC4R seeks to foreground. So, even while the door remains open and inviting for engagement, the situatedness of these marginalised subjectivities may render it impossible for them to have the luxury and freedom to accept the invitation or respond to the prompts. I also wonder if it is possible for the constituents of the collective to remain unaffected through these entanglements and how under conditions of egalitarianism and attentiveness to power asymmetries, western feminist encounters with indigenous cultures may shape the relationship – with ‘people, issues, concerns, stories and histories’ and also presents and futures.

As a gentle provocation and invitation for conversation, I ask if the collective conditions for reuse which has emerged as a way to address embedded power dynamics and the preoccupation with human authorship and ownership of knowledge objects, has also the responsibility to deepen the consequences of this entanglement with decolonial and indigenous methodologies. Further, in doing so, should it be more thoughtful and considerate to think not just about freeing up the site of knowledge creation for meaningful encounters but to ask if the invitees truly have the freedom to engage. As indigenous communities around the world grapple with the existential crisis of climate change and its impact on lives, cultures and spiritual practices, should the collective ‘conditions’ for reuse also be an examination of the ‘conditions’ that continue to keep marginalised groups preoccupied with life and death. Are there more urgent and immediate needs that need attention and should the space of reuse be rearranged to accommodate this urgency? In other words, one could question whether ‘conditions’ refer to the collectively-agreed norms and responsibilities or do they refer to the ‘states’ that open up access so these invitations and prompts could be accepted. In effect, what I am saying is that for as long as the engagement with indigenous knowledges remains confined to the theoretical and methodological while excluding the ontological, the opportunity to work in disappropriative ways remains underexplored.

This nagging question centring my attention like a pebble in my shoe imbues other encounters in the space. For instance, the sustained engagement of the authors of CC4R with Open Licence practices that tend to ignore historical contexts and power asymmetries for their potential to inform positive reuse practices is encouraging. The reluctance with which authorship is acknowledged further gestures towards an intent to break free of individual appropriation of the collective endeavour of knowledge production.

Nevertheless, it leads me to ask if CC4R remains conscious of not just the historical contexts of these asymmetries but the ongoing injustices that indigenous communities and cultures are being subject to. This question extends to the point that the authors make on the use of data for open science and the need to investigate the scope of what data means within indigenous worldviews. The authors raise pertinent questions on the risks of biopiracy and biocolonialism in FAIR principles governing use of indigenous data and favour the application of indigenous approaches to feminist politics of reuse as a way to reorient the interpretation of what data means towards indigenous understandings. Once again, the potential to not just consider indigenous understanding of data but empower the embedding of such understandings in institutional (academic and beyond – IPCC, WEF etc.) seats of power seems to me an opportunity that the CC4R could begin reflect on. Is it enough for CC4R to be interested in the constituent principles of the content that is being considered for reuse which no doubt has the capacity to expand the conversation so it dwells on the questions raised here but is it also necessary to reimagine the site of reuse as dispersed and evolving collective spaces within sites of power where the purpose of reuse of this data is determined.

In this vein, I use the invitation to engage as an opportunity to expand the potential of CC4R to respond to the urgency of the present through applying indigenous knowledge notions of deep and circular time as a way to reuse knowledge so the injustices of the past are not revisited in the present and future through these relational ways of engagement where the question in not just about the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ but also the ‘what’ and the ‘when’.