Open Journals at Memorial University
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Mapping Out Indigenous and Racialized Critical Community-Based Perspectives and Experiences in the Time of COVID
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic has had many implications for the lives, health, and well-being of Indigenous and racialized queer individuals and communities across the globe. In this article, three queer social workers (two Indigenous and one racialized-settler), situated on the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabek, and Neutral/Attawandaron people discuss lived experiences of social isolation, and mental health, while navigating work, education, and moments of resilience, in their communities of belonging. Through a circle process, they discuss the implications of social isolation for queer, Indigenous and racialized-settler individuals in the context of shifting notions of community due to the pandemic. The authors engage with unique intersectional social work standpoints that are steeped in Indigenous-centred, critically reflexive, queer, intersectional feminist, and relational approaches that highlight the politics of care, relational accountability, and relationship with Creation and ethics during COVID-19. The article concludes with recommendations for social work practice with Indigenous and racialized queer communities
“Teach Me How to Stay on Top of Things”: Navigating Ontological (In)Security and Optimistic Attachments
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic has prompted universities across the globe to shift to digital platforms. This shift has ensured the minimization of disruption by offering flexible, transparent, and accessible remote learning that aligns with the intensified “business-as-usual” neo-liberal structure of higher education. This ethos has led to renewed ontological shifts through the production of persons who sustain a neo-liberal project of world-making. Utilizing Foucauldian concepts of governmentality and subjectivity, I present an analysis of the reconfiguration of a neo-liberal normalcy, whereby the student-as-academic subject encounters an ontological insecurity that requires a (re)constitution of the self through mechanisms of risk assessment, surveillance, and self-responsibilization. Situated in my own experiences as a tutorial leader facilitating an undergraduate critical social work course during the pandemic, I consider how this constitution of the subject seems to be at odds with the commitments to social justice that are part of critical social work education. The article complicates students’ and instructors’ dual desires of achieving a critical understanding of social issues and of obtaining a coherent subjectivity to “stay on top” of their learning trajectories. I argue that, as bodies become oriented towards a political rationality of normalcy, security, and continuity, students increasingly deploy moral technologies that (re)invent the human as an optimistic enterprising subjectivity
Beyond the Rupture: COVID-19, Children, and the World Anew
No full textThis article presents an autoethnographic exploration into the disruption of my PhD field research with children and youth because of the COVID-19 pandemic. My exploration bridges what Roy has called the “rupture” of the pandemic, and the subsequent impact on the ability to complete graduate research and on the opportunities that have been created to reimagine not only our research approaches but also our world anew. I argue that the gateway to creating a new world of our imaging, in research, policy and practice, must include the visions and voices of children as they respond to the immediate interruptions caused by the virus and as we collectively imagine the path forward. Children can provide a unique perspective of the pandemic from their lived experiences at home, at school, and in the community, as well as in their insightful and thoughtful ideas of how we need to move through this virus together. It is through our collective actions that we decide what is on the other side
Deconstructing the Romanticization of Solidarity: Reflections on Social Worker Performativity and Resistance during COVID-19
No full textThis article explores how COVID-19 has impacted our understanding of our frontline practice and professional identity as four doctoral social work students. When the pandemic unfolded, we were completing a collaborative autoethnographic research project that revealed how our professional practices were shaped by both performativity and resistance. Because of COVID-19, this project was paused. When we reconvened to draft our research paper, we noted a collective change in our perceptions of performativity and resistance in our practice. In this article we share the insights that arose in the context of our roles as frontline workers. We consider the “romanticizing” of discourses related to frontline workers during the pandemic. We also reflect on the heightened pressure that the four of us have felt to “perform" these discourses in our work. We argue that while outwardly positive, such discourses have their roots in capitalist neo-liberal ideals, and thus they occlude spaces of resistance in already prescriptive practice environments, and ultimately maintain oppression for service users
Editorial: Pandemic Social Work: Practice, Education, and Activism in the Time of COVID
No full textThis editorial introduces the special issue Pandemic Social Work: Social Work Practice, Education, and Activism in the Time of COVID
The Death of Postcolonialism: The Founder’s Foreword
No full textPostcolonialism stands today in flagrant contradiction with its mission. This assertion should scarcely come as a surprise. Come to think of it: what has postcolonialism done to colonization in the past few decades, save passively reflecting on it and its realities that often do not fit the reality of things? How much leeway does postcolonialism give its critic in expressing opposition to colonization? And how does it rate as a field for serious decolonization? As a start toward answering these questions, or coming close to answering them, the following pages offer a commentary on how I feel about postcolonialism. I will confine myself to one particular reason I consider postcolonialism a dismal failure, which is incontestable and will hopefully startle the dull reader into alertness. I prefer here simple words with a direct message and no opaque subtleties
Ekphrastic Inquiry into the Neolithic Mind in the Islands of Scotland and Wales
Get PDFIn a world of schooling that is increasingly driven by the measurable and quantifiable, poetry provides a rare experience of the ineffable. While there are indeed many other things teachers need to learn besides the reading and writing of poems, the practice of poetry teaches us to be nimble communicators, and allows us to either follow a strict structure or make our own rules. Poems demand that we choose words with just the right weight, tone, and rhythm to make the poem sing, or invent the right words if they don’t already exist. By breaking us free from the structures of formal prose, writing poetry can help us to find our voice and express the universal aspects of our personal experiences. When we are conscious of crafting imagery with words, the experience of making a poem can feel closer to painting than to writing prose
Review of Post-Millennial Palestine: Literature, Memory, Resistance Edited by Rachel Gregory Fox and Ahmad Qabaha
No full textCoinciding with the onset of the Arab Spring in 2011 and the protests that continued to sweep across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, the past decade has seen a growing number of English-language studies dealing with Palestinian literature. Some scholars trace specific genres, like the short story or the novel, as aesthetic and political creations in relation to pivotal moments in Palestinian history—the 1948 Nakba, the 1967 Naksa, the 1987-93 First Intifada, and the 2000-05 Second Intifada (Farag 2016; Abu- Manneh 2016)—while others examine Palestinian writings in conjunction with other media (film) or national literatures (American, Israeli) within wider theoretical frameworks, such as postcolonial feminism, diasporic studies, or world literature (Ball 2012; Qabaha 2018; Lustig 2019). Much more scholarship is in the pipeline, as seen in the notes on the contributors to Post-Millennial Palestine: Literature, Memory, and Resistance. This edited volume of ten essays is a welcome and timely contribution to this critical corpus. Its most unique feature is its focus on mainly 21st century literary productions by second- or third-generation survivors of the Nakba; relatively new writers who are equally yet differently invested in the cause and idea of Palestine when compared to canonical authors such as Mahmoud Darwish, Emile Habibi, Fadwa Tuqan, Samira Azzam, and Ghassan Kanafani, to mention but a few. Post-Millennial Palestine takes as its starting point the derailed Oslo Accords of 1993, which could not but have induced a contemporary sensibility and poetics in the face of the failed peace process and the relentless encroachment on Palestinian land in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, accompanied by daily violations of the human and political rights of the occupied. This collection was published only a few months before the latest as- sault on Gaza in May 2021, a tragic event which, in cities around the world, triggered enormous shows of solidarity with Palestinians, as well as a renewed commitment to their just cause for statehood (whether through a one-state or a two-state solution)
Men, Masculinities, and the Global Pandemic: Exploring the Politics of Masculinities and Interlocking Relations of Power During the Initial Stage of COVID-19
No full textThis article reflects on and analyzes interlocking relations of power pertaining to the politics of masculinities during the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Situated within the context of the current global pandemic, we apply masculinities theories, feminist theoretical insights, and cultural studies of men and masculinities to various social, political, and economic contexts. In this article we argue that the conditions created by the global pandemic in its initial stage fuelled the resurgence of hegemonic masculinity. Accordingly, we identify and explore how pandemic responses and outcomes have been impacted by masculinities while also examining white-hegemonic-masculine ideals during a time of crisis. Analyzing data from foundation reports, international organizations, and other materials connected to our analysis of white hegemonic masculinity, we discuss how, during the initial stage of the pandemic, vulnerable populations, particularly women and communities of colour, were impacted by a resurgence of hegemonic masculinity. We further discuss how during this time the increase in men’s violence, women’s disproportionate caregiving, and men’s desire to appear strong and “manly” certainly implicated the ways in which hegemonic masculinity impacted the lives of women and children during a time of crisis. Thereby, light is shed on the multiplicity of complex and fluid ways in which the politics of masculinities shaped a global pandemic. Our findings have implications for social work practitioners and educators interested in gender justice