Relational Resistance: Consequential Freedom Dreaming in Divisive Times

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Eighteen
  In Roundtable Session: Afro-Futurism, Freedom Dreaming, and Knowledge Production in Education (Table 3)

Abstract

This conceptual paper provides an interdisciplinary exploration of “relational resistance” as a concept for consequential educational research and practice. Relational resistance focuses attention on two key dimensions: the centrality of the relational dynamic between educators, youth, parents, and communities, and the transformative potential of resistance to dehumanizing stereotypes, policies, and practices. The interdisciplinary survey of relational resistance in social work, developmental psychology, and healthcare results in identifying three foundational constructs: critical empathy, solidarity building, and attuned partnering. We offer relational resistance in education as a freedom dream (Kelley, 2003), one in which youth and educators interrogate the contexts of racial, gender, socioeconomic, linguistic, political, and ablesistic privileges and oppressions, and are provoked to action toward mutual consciousness, vulnerability, and humanization.

Authors

• L. Trenton S. Marsh, University of Central Florida
  Presenting Author

• Anna Smith, Illinois State University
  Presenting Author