Invitation, Invocation, Transformation: (Un) Voiced Encounters with the Beyond-Human World

Drawing on work by Gloria Anzaldua and other women-of-colors theorists, this article suggests that by positing a deeply relational worldview - a metaphysics of radical interconnectedness - we can develop and enact innovative dialogic encounters with the beyond-human world. Defining the world as "ensouled" and her surroundings as sacred and sentient, Anzaldua establishes a meaning-saturated, participatory relationship between herself and all existence. This relationship is dialogic, enabling her to read the world for information, guidance, and direction. It is argued that this dialogic reading practice is a transformational decolonial process that offers vibrant alternatives to Cartesian philosophy's anthropocentric, dichotomous ontology and epistemology.