How Can We Dialogue With the World Without Having a Critical Dialogue With Ourselves First?

• In Event: Difficult Dialogues in Uncertain Times: Creating Duoethnographic Spaces and Taking Responsibility as Scholar-Educators

Abstract

This presentation will offer the author's lived experiences and dual voices as Muslim-Canadian woman in order to challenge the prefabricated hegemonic notions of our relationships as Canadians, citizens, and community members. Using auto/duoethnographic methods and poetry the author unpacks her transnational and cross-cultural encounters which are situated in tension-filled spaces, always in-the-making and the in-between spaces of her Canadian identity. The combination of auto/duoethnographic methods and poetry fills the cracks of our knowing and unknowing with moments of full consciousness where newness and possibility come into the world.
In an age of "isms" and "phobias" we must seek to carve out a critical and reflective dialogic space for ethical risk-taking where a disturbance of the formatted space of "we- relation" unfolds. We have an obligation to challenge our intentional and unintentional ignorance and our existing and potential resistance to complex issues of masking the marginalization of racial, cultural and religious minority groups. Beginning with our inner dialogue and by examining our own positions of both power, privilege, and authority, and marginalization, subjugation and oppression, we can move away from fragmented and unidimensional conversations to reflective dialogic space of meaningful action to keep historical and blatant oppression from repeating - Anew day brings something new!

a Choice,

to disrupt,

the rigid corners of ready-made solutions!

a Chance,

to shift,

the margins into places of transformative resistance!

a Change,

to fracture,

the powerful forces that continue the subordination of all!

everyday is a new day of movement, action, liberation.

Author

• Momina Khan, University of Saskatchewan