Sitting in the Mess: Why Critical Theorists, Therapists, Researchers, and Educators Must Commit to t
- Hillary Rubesin, MA, LPC, PhD Student
- Aug 15, 2015
- 4 min read
Hello! My name is Hillary, and I am a White, middle class, American-born expressive arts therapist-researcher working primarily with under-resourced, international refugee communities currently living in North Carolina. Through my graduate research, I hope to explore what themes and issues arise when these communities engage in individual and collective arts-based narrative construction.
Because of my personal and professional backgrounds, intentionally acknowledging the cultural, socioeconomic, racial, and lingual dynamics and differences between my clients and myself is critical. Kovach (2005) stated, “Critical research can be emancipatory—or not—depending on where you want to take it” (p. 20). Taking research to this emancipatory, respectful, empowering, anti-oppressive, justice-oriented place is hard, never-ending work, and I plan to struggle with this task for the rest of my career. I encourage you all to join me in looking (again) at the choices we make as clinicians, researchers, local community members, and global citizens. As Absolon & Willett (2005) reminded readers, “To look twice is to practise respect” (p. 108).
Every choice researchers make holds political implications regarding whose voices guide the research and who will benefit from the process and the results (Strega, 2005). In order to truly respect those being “studied,” researchers coming from a critical perspective must consistently re-visit their choices to ensure all aspects of the research (including the question, methodology, analysis, presentation of findings, and dissemination) are consistent with the researcher’s ontology and epistemology. For instance, if my goals are truly to honor the marginalized voices of my refugee clients and to maintain my integrity as a critical researcher, then I must put the ongoing desires and needs of my clients above any of my preconceived interventions and not simply as endnotes in my discussion (herising, 2005; Inman & Tummala-Narra, 2010).
Let’s be real—as a clinician, implementing pre-established “evidence-based practices” would allow me to bill Medicaid more easily. And yes, as a researcher, conducting randomly controlled trials would probably increase my funding opportunities and make my research more publishable. But, do these practices best benefit my clients? Not necessarily. Would these methods be advocated for by my clients? Perhaps not. Having an anti-oppressive research purpose is not enough—critical researchers must also engage in anti-oppressive research processes (Potts & Brown, 2005).
Again, committing to honoring the voices and self-chosen processes of marginalized and oppressed communities can get uncomfortable. Fortunately, expressive therapists are trained to sit with discomfort. I would go as far to say it is our ethical responsibility to sit with (and struggle with) this discomfort, especially when working with less-privileged communities. The idea of therapist as “human rights activist” is “a new professional self-understanding” (Koch & Weidinger-von der Recke, 2009)—one that must be embraced. As Dressel, Kerr, & Steven (2010) warned, “Keeping silent about privilege maintains the status quo and superiority of White individuals (p. 444), and oftentimes White people are given a pass when it comes to effectively and competently dealing with race-based issues.
Let’s take a brief look at what’s been going on in the United States over the past year. Many liberal White Americans have stated they are onboard with the #BlackLivesMatter movement, but under whose terms? Will liberal White Americans continue their “support” if rioters burn a CVS in Baltimore? Or if protesters coopt a Bernie Sanders rally? Whose rules and processes does the #BlackLivesMatter movement have to follow in order to be palatable to White people? Who made, make, and maintain the laws that control (and often terrorize) marginalized communities? Who determines effective tactics for social movements? As Cross, et al. (2011) astutely wrote, “Measuring effectiveness means measuring achievement of selected outcomes, but whose preferred outcomes are used to establish effectiveness is a matter of social justice” (p. 100).
In my research, this starts with a basic language issue. My original guiding question was this: What is the impact of arts-based public narrative on refugee adolescents? After critically considering the above issues, I am now choosing to ask: What is the experience of refugee adolescents participating in an arts-based narrative construction process? This simple re-wording shifts the focus and agency of the research from a researcher-conceived intervention (arts-based public narrative) to the clients’ authentic experiences/voices, no matter what these experiences/voices share.
Will this shift in approach require me to dive into the mess of school rules and regulations, language, cultural, and racial barriers, social norms, adolescent identity issues, and dominant research practices? Yes. But, to maintain our integrity as anti-oppressive, human rights advocating, critical researchers, I firmly believe—as expressive therapists—we must commit to getting our hands (and hearts and minds) dirty.
References
Absollon, K., & Willett, C. (2005). Putting ourselves forward: Location in Aboriginal research. In L. Brown, & S. Strega (Eds.), Research as resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and anti-oppressive approaches (pp. 97-126). Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press/Women’s Press.
Cross, T., Friesen, B., Jivanjee, P., Gowen, K., Bandurraga, A., Matthew, C., & Maher, N. (2011). Defining youth success using culturally appropriate community-based participatory research methods. Best Practices in Mental Health, 7(1), 94-114.
Dressel, J. L., Kerr, S., & Steven, H. B. (2010). Developing competency with white identity and privilege. In J. A. Erickson Cornish, B. A. Schreier, & L. I. Nadkarni (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural counseling competencies (pp. 443-474). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
herising, F. (2005). Interrupting positions: Critical thresholds and queer pro/positions. In L. Brown, & S. Strega (Eds.), Research as resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and anti-oppressive approaches (pp. 127-152). Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press/Women’s Press.
Inman, A. G., & Tummala-Narra, P. (2010). Clinical competencies in working with immigrant communities. In J. A. Erickson Cornish, B. A. Schreier, & L. I. Nadkarni (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural counseling competencies (pp. 117-153). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Koch, S. C., & Weidinger-von der Recke, B. (2009). Traumatized refugees: An integrated dance and verbal therapy approach. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 36(5), 298-296.
Kovach, M. (2005). Emerging from the margins: Indigenous methodologies. In L. Brown, & S. Strega (Eds.), Research as resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and anti-oppressive approaches (pp. 19-36). Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press/Women’s Press.
Potts, K., & Brown, L. (2005). Becoming an anti-oppressive researcher. In L. Brown, & S. Strega (Eds.), Research as resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and anti-oppressive approaches (pp. 255-286). Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press/Women’s Press.
Strega, S. (2005). The view from the poststructural margins: Epistemology and methodology reconsidered. In L. Brown, & S. Strega (Eds.), Research as resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and anti-oppressive approaches (pp. 199-236). Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press/Women’s Press.
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