The Hidden History of the Arts, Culture, and Creative Resistance

Art is not neutral. (I’ve written this before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t think anything can be really neutral, but I especially believe that art cannot be neutral.)

Art is memory; it can resist or encourage; it can rewrite and question; it can challenge or sanction. Art is not inherently heroic, but it sure can be. It can also be a powerful foe if deployed in a way that stifles and curtails knowledge. And like any force with that much power, it’s often the first thing to be erased or co-opted by systems of control. Not just art itself but also the people who dedicate their lives to wielding it as resistance and rebellion.

In this final chapter of our Epistemicide series, we shift from the schoolroom to the studio, from the classroom to the concert hall. We follow the trail of erasure through music, literature, architecture, design, and oral culture. And we ask: What happens when culture is curated by conquest? When the voices of dissent are othered and marginalized. 

But this entry isn’t just about loss. It’s also about recovery. It also tells of the radical, joyful, difficult act of reclaiming what has been buried, burned, or rewritten, and perhaps (hopefully) temporarily forgotten. Recovering knowledge isn’t just an academic exercise; it is more akin to an act of cultural defiance.

Art as a Historical Weapon

Art has always been entangled with power. Kings have commissioned it to celebrate and cement themselves in history, it has been curated and pillaged by colonizers, burned by fascists, banned by school boards, and used to define what counts as “civilized.” What gets preserved, displayed, or funded is never an accident. Funding and statewide support usually reflect who’s in charge and what they want remembered.

Now, let’s be frank, art doesn’t really require the support from the powers that be. If anything, it is the powers that be that could use some of the arts’ power to work for them. Or it may be that the power that upholds the status quo fears dissident voices and so resorts to diminishing their exposure, preservation, and importance.

• Folk art and outsider art have almost always been dismissed as quaint, naive, amateurish, unprofessional, and trivial. Purposefully disregarding that this sort of art reflects a less filtered, more honest reflection of people’s lived experiences and therefore history.  Folk art gives voice to marginalized communities and individuals, regardless of ethnicity, social class, or economic standing. With its raw, self-taught expression and its welcome to anyone, it democratizes art. It is a threat because it operates beyond the reach of tradition, and in doing so, it can promote a new way of seeing, presenting unique perspectives, and redefining what is possible. Folk art demonstrates the power of working purely and powerfully outside the status quo. 

• Oral traditions are likewise treated as inexpert, just stories, unserious academically, you know, because of their not being written down. We discussed this briefly in Epistemicide Part 1, but while humans have been teaching and learning through oral traditions, storytelling, and song for millennia, through the codification of knowledge, the teaching of and holding history through oral traditions has been systematically devalued. Another way I would say this is that the printed word has, at the very least, led to gatekeeping knowledge. To be clear, the printing press allowed for the storage of information outside of human memory and human interaction, and it did, to some extent, democratize knowledge. And this is invaluable. Do not get me wrong, I love the written word, I just don’t think that it should be seen as superior or more legitimate than oral traditions. The real issue here is which knowledge was chosen to be printed, circulated, and made more accessible, and which knowledge was destroyed or passed over in the process (i.e., colonial powers rewriting people’s histories from a European perspective, censorship of subjects deemed heretical, etc.). It reminds me a little of when people today say that if someone has listened to an audiobook, they haven’t actually read the book. It is essential to remember that literacy and oral tradition are not mutually exclusive. They can exist in a dynamic relationship. 

 • It is unavoidable, and we must mention, of course, colonialism and its relationship to art. Non-Western art has been systematically stolen and displayed in Western museums as trophies of conquest, stripped of context, spirituality, and living culture. When artifacts are severed from their cultural context and reinterpreted through a Eurocentric lens, Western institutions are basically asserting their ways of knowing as superior and more powerful. Asserting their power and, in many ways, humiliating the colonized people, highlighting their powerlessness. Many of the artifacts taken, such as sacred masks, statues, and ceremonial tools, were not merely “art” but held profound spiritual, religious, or political significance. After they are removed, they are prevented from being used in cultural practices, breaking their spiritual link. And finally, many Western institutions argue that non-Western countries are unable to care for their own artifacts properly. And that this justifies their keeping invaluable pieces by claiming that these nations are not advanced enough to hold and care for their own history. Arguments like these perpetuate racist stereotypes and reaffirm the colonial mindset that led to the theft in the first place

When certain voices are erased from cultural memory, it doesn’t just hurt the artists themselves; it narrows the possibilities of understanding and imagination for all of us.

Music and Epistemicide

Few disciplines show epistemicide more clearly than music. Here are a few places where this is evident:

• African American musical traditions were considered “low culture” for a long time. These are musical genres and traditions that evolved from the spirituals and work songs of enslaved people. The reason this music was considered ‘lowbrow’ was exclusively due to its association with Black communities and not the Eurocentric white canon. Aka, racism. Perceptions of this music began to change in the 20th century. Only once the music moved into the mainstream — and even then, only after white musicians and white audiences adopted it — were blues, ragtime, jazz, and R&B celebrated. This is especially true when they became commercially successful and thus culturally acceptable.

Epistemicide shows itself here in the way that white performers in blackface minstrel shows of the 19th century co-opted and parodied African American songs and dances for white audiences for years. They distorted and defined the music negatively for many white Americans. Presenting it as ridiculous and associating it with vice, overshadowing music’s authenticity and complexity. Only after it became evident how popular “race music” was did the dominant forces shift from mockery and disdain to cultural appropriation and exploitation. The change is dramatic; suffice it to say that during the Cold War, the U.S. sent “Jazz Ambassadors” on tours around the world. The program began in the 1950s, and it sent internationally beloved jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Duke Ellington, on foreign tours to promote a more positive image of America. Later on, we can see this cycle happen again, with hip-hop and rap vilified and presented as dangerous.

• Indigenous music, often rooted in ceremony and place, was banned or distorted under assimilationist policies. It was rejected in favor of assimilation because, like African American musical traditions, it presented a threat to Eurocentric culture. Schools, in particular boarding schools, introduced Western art and music in order to suppress and replace indigenous traditions. Native American music is deeply intertwined with spiritual beliefs, ceremonies, and community life, making its suppression a direct attack on Native identity. The goal behind “civilizing” a people through Eurocentric culture was the very erasure of this identity. To force communities into the overarching culture and tradition favoured by the dominant power. Instead of co-opting and using Indigenous music as African American music had been, the attempt made here was to eliminate it.

 • Even within Western culture, there is epistemicide. For example, in Western Classical music, women composers like Fanny Mendelssohn, Florence Price, and Ethel Smyth, even Mozart’s big sister, Maria Anna Mozart, were overshadowed or actively denied the same opportunities as their male counterparts. Nannerl was a prodigy in her own right, yet most people will never really hear about her, the role she played, or her contributions to her brother’s music. Although, to young Mozart’s credit, at 14, he heard Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere Mei, Deus at the Vatican. This was a historically guarded score performed only (and only!) for exclusive audiences. Under the threat of excommunication! Well, after hearing it just once, he memorized the music and later transcribed it, ending the exclusive control over the piece. He used his privilege as a gatebreaker!

Historically, when women have achieved greatness, their stories have been left out, I feel in part, to curtail their influence and standing in society as a whole. When, even against all odds, some women do stand out, they are labelled in derogatory terms or, yet again, like the other marginalized groups, deemed dangerous influences or just erased from history books. Still, I think the biggest issue in this case isn’t even exposure; it’s that, overwhelmingly, women and girls haven’t been given the opportunity to share knowledge and achieve greatness at the same scale as their male counterparts.

• It is not only Colonial regimes that commit epistemicide. State-controlled media in fascist and totalitarian regimes censored music that didn’t fit the nationalistic or ideological mold. Think Cabaret! This might feel like a much more relevant example of epistemicide occurring in modern times. By controlling the cultural landscape, these regimes sought to eliminate alternative ideas and perspectives and impose a single, state-approved reality. They targeted “degenerate music,” which is what the Nazis labeled jazz and modernist music, to promote strictly white composers who aligned with their views and message. In other autocratic governments, such as the Soviet Union, the government banned foreign and certain Soviet musicians whose music and lyrics questioned the system. In cases like this, what happens is that a thriving resistance-fueled underground music scene surged and secretly distributed the music of rebellion.

Music, like all art, carries a worldview. When those worldviews are silenced, so are the stories they could’ve helped us hear. And we must always be aware and alert as to why these songs are so threatening to power. 

Literary Erasure & Banned Books

Books are another of the most visible sites of epistemicide because they hold so much, leave a paper trail, and, when they’re burned, leave ashes.

• Entire non-European literary traditions from African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latin American traditions have been excluded from the Western canon, or included only when they reinforce Western ideas. Even though there are ancient and sophisticated literary traditions across all of them. Instead, the West portrays these societies as exotic, backward, and inferior to its own cultural superiority. When some concepts do find their way into the canon, they are usually there to reinforce colonial power dynamics or, in a way, be palatable to the West. Where interpretations focus on aspects understandable to Western audiences.  

• Literature by anarchists, abolitionists, revolutionaries, queer people, and feminists has been banned, burned, or mischaracterized and buried. For example, I was so surprised recently when I read an early 1930s Spanish book called “Anarchy Explained to Children.” Just the introduction was a clear explanation of the fundamental goals of the anarchist movement of the 30s: freedom from oppression for all, universal love, and human solidarity. After reading what they stood for in their own words, it was wild to me how greatly people who have worked for positive change and solidarity, believing in the inherent good of people, have been demonized and mischaracterized. The mischaracterization of people who actively oppose their oppression is a recurring theme throughout this text. It seems that whenever a person or group creates work to promote ideas that challenge a tyrannical power, it is they who are labeled dangerous and are maligned.

Oscar Wilde was incarcerated and persecuted for being himself; many people might think that it was exclusively due to his queerness, but he actually had a deep affiliation with anarchist thought. He was openly anti-authoritarian, anti-nationalist, and held non-conformist ideas. As a witty, eloquent, popular figure, he was much too dangerous, you see?

The misrepresentation of anarchists is not all; of course, we have all the literature of other queer people censored and labeled as obscene for years. Authors like James Baldwin, Radclyffe Hall, and, more recently, George M. Johnson and Maia Kobabe. Revolutionaries and feminists challenged power dynamics, whether due to gender roles or by criticizing entire systems of oppression, both of which were suppressed to prevent the spread of dissenting ideas. The pattern seems more and more evident, no? These works are censored and misrepresented to kneecap their power for fear that the ideas in them would disrupt the status quo. 

• Languages have been a target. Under colonization, Indigenous languages were often explicitly banned in schools, punished in public, and erased from formal records. Across the U.S., Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, generations of children were forbidden from speaking their mother tongues in residential and missionary schools. Language was labeled a barrier to “civilization,” and punished as a form of defiance.

But even when people were forced to assimilate, they found ways to smuggle meaning through sound. Pidgins, creoles, code-switching, and slang became tools of survival. An attempt to hold on to rhythm, tone, metaphor, and soul, even while surrounded by a dominant tongue. I think of Lee in Steinbeck’s East of Eden or James by Percival Everett. These forms of speech are often dismissed as “broken English,” or “street talk”, or “low class”, when in fact they are living records of cultural adaptation under duress and resistance. Take Afrikaans, sometimes derogatorily called “Baby Dutch,” which emerged during colonial occupation in South Africa. It blended Dutch, Khoisan, and Bantu languages, as well as Malay and Portuguese influences. For some, it became a language of power. But for others, it also carried the complexity of layered histories, migration, and forced hybridity. What’s clear is that it wasn’t “baby” anything. It was its own thing, and its complexity tells a story colonial powers preferred not to recognize.

Or consider Cab Calloway’s Hepster’s Dictionary, published in 1938. It was the first dictionary of African American slang, created by a jazz legend who knew that language is culture, and culture is power. His dictionary wasn’t just a list of words. It was a bold assertion that Black musicians and artists had built their own vibrant, irreducible world. One that didn’t need translation to be valid. In a society that labeled their speech as illiterate or degenerate, this was an act of cultural sovereignty.

When you erase a language, you don’t just delete words. You erase: metaphors that don’t exist in any other tongue. Kinship terms that reflect different understandings of family and care. Moral codes are built into grammar. Logic systems that shape how people see time, space, and selfhood. Language is not just communication; it’s how we make meaning. When epistemicide targets language, it targets the architecture of thought itself.

• Literacy itself has been treated as dangerous. In many colonies, including the United States during slavery, enslaved people were forbidden from learning to read or write. Laws made literacy a crime, and the punishments were brutal. The very idea that someone might learn to read was enough to inspire fear in enslavers. Because of what literacy could lead to: connection, history, resistance, imagination, escape.

To deny someone literacy is not just to deny them access to books. It’s to cut them off from the written record of their own humanity. It is a tool of epistemicide with the specific goal of severing people from memory, lineage, and power.

And yet! People still learned. Secretly, boldly, desperately, rebelliously! Frederick Douglass taught himself to read by tricking white children into giving him lessons. Phillis Wheatley, kidnapped from West Africa, published a book of poetry by age 20. All over the South, enslaved people passed books hand to hand, taught each other in secret, and built informal schools under threat of violence. Because they understood the same thing their enslavers did: that reading was a weapon, and writing was a form of freedom. We’re often told that literacy was eventually “granted” after emancipation, as though it were a gift. But it was never granted. It was taken.

The echoes of that fear persist. Today, entire communities still face underfunded schools, literacy gaps, and book bans. The arts and humanities are the first to be tossed from the curriculum because they don’t serve money first; they broaden the mind, deepen connections, and encourage positive rebellion. And then, when reading becomes dangerous, you know something important is being hidden. The banning of books is not about protecting children. It is so much more about preserving the dominant narrative.

Architecture & Design as Epistemicide

We too often don’t think of buildings. They’re just… there. Big, unmoving, permanent. We pass them every day without questioning their presence, their symbolism, or the stories they overwrite. But architecture is a language of power and always has been. It is one of the most visible, long-lasting tools of epistemicide. It reshapes the land, culture, and memory through stone, steel, and zoning codes.

Not all architecture is created equally, not in value, but in intent. Some forms are built to reflect the needs, climate, and worldview of a local population. Others are built to assert dominance, claim territory, or erase what came before.

• Vernacular architecture, for instance, is made with local materials, rooted in cultural logic and community practices. It adapts to its environment, reflects how people live, and honors regional knowledge. You’d think this would be the most praised form of architecture: practical, sustainable, and deeply beautiful. But it has often been bulldozed, literally and metaphorically, in favor of imported European styles, applied across the globe regardless of context or need. Even in moments of resistance, like with Radical Latin American Modernism, where designers and architects reinterpreted Western forms through local sensibilities, you can still see the struggle. Rebellious and beautiful as it was, the vernacular often had to make way for the dominant influence.

• Growing up in Mexico City, I saw the clash of colonizer and colonized. I’ve mentioned this before in this series, but in the Centro Histórico, the Metropolitan Cathedral stands atop the ruins of Aztec pyramids. All of it is built on a lake. It’s a layered metaphor made real: one power asserting itself over another. One system of knowledge drowning another. The cathedral, for the record, is sinking. During colonization, this kind of architectural epistemicide happened all over the world: mosques, temples, longhouses, shrines, and sacred city layouts were demolished to make way for churches, government buildings, and monuments to conquest built in the aesthetic language of the colonizer. The erasure wasn’t just cultural, it was spatial.

• And it didn’t stop there. Entire systems of local ancient knowledge were dismissed as unsophisticated, such as seasonal shelters adapted to migratory patterns, passive cooling systems designed for hot climates, water-harvesting technologies, and food-growing methods specific to soil and rainfall cycles. All labeled as primitive, or worse, ignored altogether. Which brings us to the relationship between architecture and farming. Architecture and farming have been decoupled through industrialization. Community gardens, terraced farms, and food forests, once integrated into cities and homes, have been replaced by monoculture agribusiness and supermarket chains. Design, once centered on seasonal rhythms and communal nourishment, is now based on maximum output and shelf life.

• Urban design in the U.S. offers a more insidious form of epistemicide. In the modern era, architecture and urban design continue to reshape culture, but now, they often erase function, community, and identity in favor of efficiency and profit. It is the destruction of Black neighborhoods through highway construction (see: Robert Moses in NYC). Redlining, white flight, and the rise of suburbia to enforce racial and class segregation. The “urban renewal” projects that promised revitalization but delivered displacement. These design choices didn’t just impact housing, they fragmented communities, erased cultural networks, and created new forms of isolation. Today, we often misunderstand the problem as “modern architecture.” But what we’re seeing isn’t modernism, it’s corporate architecture. Buildings stripped of identity to make them easier to lease. Even fast food restaurants without signature shapes (no more Pizza Huts with red roofs, no Dairy Queens with swirls, no playgrounds at McDonald’s). Design reduced to template and turnover.

These aren’t just stylistic choices. They represent a shift in values: from place and people to profit. From cultural specificity to brand uniformity. From shared space to hyper-efficiency.

Design informs how we move, who belongs where, and how we’re expected to behave. It frames the “normal.” And when dominant powers control design, they don’t just decide the shape of buildings and cities; they shape bodies, relationships, memory, and imagination. Which spaces are loud, messy, and full of children? Which ones are quiet, sterile, and heavily policed? Which communities get parks, art, and music? Which ones get asphalt and surveillance? Design isn’t neutral. It never has been.

The Result: A Narrowed Cultural Imagination

When epistemicide strikes, it doesn’t just cut out the individual; it narrows what we think of as culture. We learn that “classical” means European. That genius wore a powdered wig and looked only a certain way. That rebellion only matters when it fits neatly into a syllabus and serves the right people. That jazz was a happy accident. That folklore is childish. That graffiti isn’t art but vandalism. That some voices are universal while others are regional, emotional, political, or “niche.”

We end up with a canon that’s not a celebration of excellence in all its different forms, but a reflection of what survived systemic gatekeeping. And, sadly, when imagination is restricted, resistance becomes harder to imagine, too.

Recognizing the Gaps in What We Were Taught

The first step in recovery is recognizing that some things are missing, some things are left out. Then we can begin to discern what exactly is missing. That means we have to notice whose names we know, and whose we don’t. The context under which we were taught and memorized some of the names we do know (Christopher Columbus…), and then, after more thorough historical research, who they really were and what they represented.  We have to consider which forms of art we are taught to value, which are fetishized, and which we were told were irrelevant or even dangerous. We can think about which stories are taught as “real” and others as “folklore.” Which is which!? Were some of the real stories only deemed real after being edited and re-edited by the powers that be so that they served the function they needed them to? Or why we see entire communities only through the lens of suffering, or not at all. Epistemicide works because it hides itself. But once you start to see it, it becomes easier to spot.

Rediscovering Suppressed Knowledge

Recovering what was lost doesn’t mean putting things back exactly as they were. That is impossible. That is also not the goal. It also won’t be easy. It means putting in time and effort, not to say this isn’t fun. We must detach the idea that learning and effort mean the process won’t be fun! So what we can do is:

• Read banned books and unearthed marginalized stories. After all, books are banned for a reason, and not the one the censors say. Banned books speak to dangerous truths and perspectives that challenge the status quo.

• Follow oral histories and family traditions. This might not seem important, but holding on to these parts of our human connection is invaluable.

• Study music, visual culture, and language outside the Euro-American bubble. 

• Support artists, writers, and educators who challenge the canon.

• Study, but decenter, Western logic as the only valid framework for “truth.”

It means trusting that memory doesn’t live only in libraries, although there are few more magical places than the library! It also lives in people, practices, rituals, bodies, rhythms, and recipes — a philomathic approach to learning.

Rebuilding Intellectual Curiosity as Resistance

Curiosity is revolutionary, and philomathy might be the best way to apply and enact that revolutionary spirit. In a system built on compliance and efficiency, the simple act of wondering, of asking “why?” or “what else?”, can become a form of defiance.

Remember:

• Learning can be joyful and rebellious.

• Culture can be remembered and remixed.

• We can sharpen imagination into a tool of liberation.

It’s a two-pronged attack: first, we hold on to the freedom of real learning, not for grades or academic goals, but for liberation and pleasure. Secondly, we think critically, a form of intellectual self-defense. To protect ourselves and each other from the effects of epistemicide by keeping our minds sharp and aware.

Fight to Remember

At Super Genius Society, we’re trying to do our small part in this recovery and awareness work. We make analog tools that highlight the creators and ideas we may not have learned about in school. We champion banned authors and overlooked composers; we show that glorified composers were fallible, as we all are; we highlight radical thinkers and artists from the mainstream and the margins. Our decks, guides, and zines are little counter-canons: fun, rebellious, and full of curiosity.

We love the lowbrow and the highbrow. We don’t believe in gatekeeping.

Epistemicide thrives on silence, forgetfulness, and resignation. But we are not powerless. We can learn, unlearn, and relearn. We can ask questions. We can read anything we like. We can listen and remember. Really, the future is a creative act, and broadening our knowledge and imaginations only makes things better. 

References & Recommended Reading

• Toni Morrison – Playing in the Dark

• Silvia Federici – Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women

• Amin Maalouf – In the Name of Identity

• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o – Decolonising the Mind

• Zeynep Tufekci – Twitter and Tear Gas

• Michel-Rolph Trouillot – Silencing the Past

• Safiya Umoja Noble – Algorithms of Oppression

• Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002)

• Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies (1999)

• bell hooks, Art on My Mind (1995)