Liming, Ole Talk, and the Politics of Listening
Episode Summary
Professor Camille Nakhid joins me for a deep and generous conversation as we reflect on how Caribbean modes of reasoning, particularly through everyday practices of liming and ole talk, become forms of theory, critique, and survival.
We talk about listening as a political act, one that requires humility, presence, and accountability. Ole talk is far from idle chatter; it is a way of knowing shaped by rhythm, memory, and relationality. Through it, Caribbean people have always found ways to analyse power, to make sense of our histories, and to imagine freer futures. Liming, in this way, becomes an epistemology of care, a method that values laughter and contradiction, and that insists that knowledge lives within the collective, not apart from it.
Camille speaks candidly about the dangers of performative solidarity and the need to stay alert to what she calls the “rubbishy white noise” that can drown out our own voices. She reframes reparation as refusal; the right to turn away from extraction, apology without substance, and token inclusion. Slow down, hear the layers beneath language, and recognise in our ole talk the quiet brilliance of Caribbean survival.
#SaltwaterReasonings #CaribbeanScholarship #CamilleNakhid #GlobalSouthDialogues #DecolonialKnowledge #PoliticsOfListening #CaribbeanEpistemologies
📚 Further Reading / Resources
Website: Learn more about the Caribbean Methodologies Biannual Conference
Book: Nakhid, C., Nakhid-Chatoor, M., Fernández Santana, A., & Wilson-Scott, S. (Eds.). (2022). Affirming methodologies: Research and education in the Caribbean (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003196969
Journal Articles
Nakhid, C., Barrow, D., & Broomes, O. (2014). Situating the education of African Trinidadians within the social and historical context of Trinidad and Tobago: Implications for social justice. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 9(2), 171-187. https://doi.org/10.1177/1746197913543817
Nakhid-Chatoor, M., Nakhid, C., Wilson, S., & Santana, A. F. (2018). Exploring liming and ole talk as a culturally relevant methodology for researching with Caribbean people. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406918813772
Wilson, S., Nakhid, C., Fernandez-Santana, A., & Nakhid-Chatoor, M. (2018). An interrogation of research on Caribbean social issues: Establishing the need for an indigenous Caribbean research approach. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 15(1), 3-12. https://doi.org/10.1177/1177180118803692
Nakhid, C., Mosca, J., & Nakhid-Schuster, S. (2019). Liming as research methodology, ole talk as research method: A Caribbean methodology. Journal of Education & Development in the Caribbean, 21(1).
