‘¡Eso no se dice’!: Exploring the value of communication distortions in participatory planning

Plans and policies rely on knowledge about communities that is often made by actors outside of the community. Exclusion from the creation of knowledge is a function of exclusion from power. Marxists, feminist, decolonial and postmodernist theorists have documented how the knowledge of some subjects is disqualified based on their gender, race, socio-economic position or a range of other constructed differences. Often, several of these constructions intersect in one person’s life, compounding their exclusion in ways that are both relational and structural (Crenshaw, 2017). Participatory planning approaches bring members of the community into contact with planning authorities in an effort to include their voices and interests in official plans. Essential to meaningful engagement in such a process is the participant’s ability to turn their ideas into change through the exercise of their agency. When that potential for transformation is missing, participation is tokenistic at best and dangerous at worst (Cooke and Kothari, 2001, Hickey and Mohan, 2004; Forester, 2020). When planners ask people whose agency is restricted by institutional and cultural forms of subjugation to talk about issues that adversely impact them, but over which they have little control, we can create exposures to internal and external risks that we are ill-equipped to mitigate. How can planners work towards social transformation without shifting the burden of speaking truth to power onto community members? One of the ways in which power and knowledge are related is through the complicated process of communication. Reflecting on power and communication in planning practice, this paper contemplates the question: when working with communities that have been historically excluded from the creation of knowledge about themselves, should planners strive for undistorted communication or should the distortion in communication be analysed for what it can tell us about agency and power, and opportunities for resistance and transformation?