THE PETITION TO CANCEL “OBJECTIVITY”

Event Title: “Decentre the Lens: Towards a Pedagogy of Curated Multiplicity”

Location: Outside the Centre for Epistemic Supremacy (formerly the Science Building)

Organised by: The Coalition for Embodied Knowledges and Narrative Pluralities

Dress Code: Fluid. Preferably interpretive.

Atmosphere: Charged but affirming. There are stickers.

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PETITION TITLE:

“Objectivity Is a Colonial Mood: We Demand Curated Multiplicity Now.”

Because no truth should arrive without a support animal and an accountability circle.

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STUDENT SPEAKER – ZIN (they/they again)

Majoring in Applied Metaphor and Intersectional Weathermancy

Fellow knower-beings, today we reject objectivity—that pale, disembodied ghost in the machine of modern thought.

For too long, “objectivity” has been wielded as a tool of erasure. It erases the sweat of knowing. The accent of truth. The dance of interpretation.

In its place, we propose Curated Multiplicity™: a framework where truth is not found, but felt. Not discovered, but hosted.

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SLIDE: OBJECTIVITY vs. CURATED MULTIPLICITY

Objectivity	Curated Multiplicity
Detachment	Passionate situatedness
Peer review	Peer vibing
Universal truths	Intimately sourced partial insights
Standardised methods	Collage-based epistemic rituals
Control groups	Consent circles
“What’s your evidence?”	“Whose grandmother felt this first?”

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READING OF THE PETITION (SIGNED BY 3,482 STUDENTS, A GOAT, AND A WITCH IN EXILE)

We, the undersigned, reject the imperial gaze of “objectivity.”

We do not wish to be studied—we wish to be witnessed.

We do not accept knowledge that pretends not to love, ache, or smell like cumin.

We call for the dissolution of rubrics, the decolonisation of footnotes, and the celebration of interpretive opacity.

Let each voice speak from its swamp, its rooftop, its shared trauma Google Doc.

Let truth be like a potluck: messy, spicy, not evenly portioned.

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FACULTY RESPONSE – PROFESSOR EMBER QUILL (she/fae)

Chair of the Department of Sensory Histories

We hear you. Effective immediately:

• Research proposals will now include a Poetics of Positioning.

• All lab reports must be accompanied by a Feelings Annex.

• Objectivity is to be replaced by “honest partiality with flair.”

Even our mathematics department has agreed to trial a system of quantitative impressionism—where numbers are not “right,” but rather “resonant.”

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CLOSING RITUAL: THE UNBURDENING OF FACTS

A group of students gathers around a bonfire made from discarded textbooks and printed rubrics. They each whisper a “fact” they no longer believe in:

ASHLEIGH (she/her):

“Water boils at 100°C.” (throws it in)

JORDAN (he/they):

“Pluto is not a planet.” (burns it and then apologises to Pluto)

MORGAN (xe/xem):

“Replication matters.” (shredded and composted)

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AFTERMATH: CHANGES TO UNIVERSITY POLICY

• All essays must now include a section titled: “My Lived Truth and the Text’s Response.”

• Exams replaced with “Knowledge Conversations in Loosely Structured Hammocks.”

• Office Hours renamed “Moments of Mutual Becoming.”