Building Response-able Abstractions with Gullah/Geechee Nation

In this article, I think with a decade-long, ongoing collaboration with the Gullah/Geechee Sustainability Think Tank to consider whether and how we can build abstractions in a scholarly way that resource Gullah/Geechee self-determination. Building on Haraway’s concept of “response-ability” I propose the concept of “response-able abstractions” as an approach to scholarly knowledge for transformative social change. I sketch out the concept of “Long Reconstruction” as an example of a response-able abstraction that can bring into relief the sociopolitical relations and space–times of environmental governance in Gullah/Geechee Nation, and as a way of producing scholarly forms of knowledge that resource Gullah/Geechee self-determination.