Council Circles on Sensitive Topics as a Feminist Praxis of Resistance in "Post-Truth" Times

• In Event: 28.066 - Viral Modernity in Education: Deconstructing Post-Truth

Abstract

What do specific feminist praxes look like in “post-truth” times, given that “the recent rise of populism in some regions of the world, together with the apparent resonance of ‘post-truth’ narratives, suggests an emerging formation of power concerned with the undoing of hard-won gains in relation to gender and other intersecting forms of inequality and difference” (Burke & Carolissen, 2018, p. 543)? This paper is based on a five-country grant project (China, Tanzania, Malawi, Cote D’Ivoire and the Philippines), of which this paper’s author is the project’s Principal Investigator, focused on global inequalities at the intersection of gender, sex, health, and education and, specifically, the translation of research around this theme into practice through the traditional practice of council (circleways.org (whose Co-Founder is this project’s consultant)). The project places a specific emphasis on exploring how nuanced understandings of “sensitivities” affect work around these topics (author, 2016, 2017).
The paper considers how council may be viewed as a feminist theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical strategy. It looks at how council is a “care-full” practice (Motta & Bennett, 2018) --- "care [is theorized] as identified with feminized affective power dynamics as opposed to the subjectivities, pedagogical relationships and careless hegemonic masculinities (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005) and accompanying affectivities that imbricate smoothly with neoliberalism and increasingly dominate the higher education [and this paper will argue, other education] landscape[s] (Amsler 2014; Amsler and Motta 2017) (Motta & Bennett, 2018). Furthermore, council is conceptualized within dSS’s thinking of “alternative thinking of alternatives”(de Sousa Santos, 2012, p. 52) as the form of the resulting pedagogies may be “new for some and very old for other people” yet the content is highly nuanced for specific 2017-2019 “small cultures” (Holliday, 1999). It is the balance of simultaneous comfort and intrigue that the project uses to connect with the projects’ intended audiences.
Council has multi-faceted aims; it is a relational arts, restorative justice and a mindfulness practice, an instructional approach, and leadership strategy (circleways.org). As it encourages honest communication, connections, collective wisdom, and appreciation of differences, the paper argues that it is directly at odds with the concept of post-truth. Thus, challenges and possibilities of doing work globally on these themes in community, primary/secondary and higher education spaces at a time of both a “rise” of populist post-truth forces undermining gains in these areas, and, at the same time, in a #MeToo era, resistance movements to open these spaces – including about queer, gender non-conforming, and/or women’s/girl’s bodies and health - will be explored. The paper will consider first-hand data from the five countries’ projects around how the challenges and successes of council shed light on “which truths matter, whose truths matter and who gets to decide what is truth? (Burke & Carolissen, 2018, p. 544)”

Author

• Lauren Ila Misiaszek, Beijing Normal University