#linking lives

Rather than the generational line of inheritance (the vertical line of history), the transmission of affect, conceptually, presupposes a horizontal line of transmission: the line of the heart. The affects are not inherited, or not only inherited. They also flow from this one to that one, here and now, via […] the circulation of the blood. . . . What is at stake with the notion of the transmission of affect is precisely the opposite of the sociobiological claim that the biological determines the social. What is at stake is rather the means by which social interaction shapes biology. My affect, if it comes across to you, alters your anatomical makeup for good or ill. This idea, perhaps more than any other, stands neo-Darwinism on its head. It is directly at odds with the premise on which neo-Darwinian biology is based. In neo-Darwinian biology especially, the individual organism is born with the urges and affects that will determine its fate. Its predisposition to certain behaviors is part of its individual genetic package, and, of course, these behaviors are intrinsically affective. Such behaviors and affects may be modified by the environment, or they may not survive because they are not adaptive. But the point is that no other source or origin for the affects is acknowledged outside of the individual one. The dominant model for transmission in neo-Darwinism is genetic transmission. It is the main model for transmission in the life sciences as they stand at present, and the critical thing about it here is that its proponents ignore the claims of social and historical context when it comes to accounting for causation.

But a leaf is a community of fungus, bacteria, protist, alga, nematode, and plant. Just as diagrams of human skin or gut usually omit the microbes that are essential components of human bodies, our images of plants, seemingly so objective, missed the essential nature of a leaf. A “maple” is not an individual made of plant cells, but a community of cells from many domains and kingdoms of life. Microbe-free plants likely do not exist in nature and, if they could be constructed, would quickly die for want of the vital connections that sustain life.

— David Geroge Haskell at NPR. Life Is The Network, Not The Self

[Michael] White often said that people do not invent problems. Instead, they are recruited into actions and ways of thinking that create problems. Narrative therapists ask questions with the intention of bringing the ways that people have been recruited into problems to light. In their inquiries, they examine the effects those problems have on people’s lives and relationships. In answering the therapist’s questions, people are able to notice gaps in their problem stories. These gaps can provide openings to other stories. As people develop and live out preferred stories, narrative therapists look for ways to link them with other people who have struggled with similar problems. This allows people to both contribute to and partake of a growing body of insider knowledge. Also, as people join their voices together , they are more likely to be heard in the larger society. They are less marginalized. This linking of lives through shared purposes is one of the fundamental and recurring ways that narrative therapy supports social justice.

“those of us raised and/or educated in western systems of thought have been trained to read and evaluate ourselves and others according to status-quo stories. We have been indoctrinated into a supremacist worldview—an overreliance on rational thought, scientistic empiricism, and hierarchical binary thinking that creates a restrictive framework that labels, divides, and segregates based on socially defined difference and sameness. Yet when we automatically label people by color, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, or any other politically charged characteristics and/or presumed embodied, psychic, political differences, we build walls between ourselves and these others. We isolate ourselves from those whom we have labeled “different.” This automatic difference-based labeling process distorts our perceptions, creating arbitrary divisions and an oppositional “us-against-them” mentality that prevents us from recognizing potential commonalities.”

“This Bridge Called My Back is especially praised for its attention to differences among women. At its strongest and most provocative, however, This Bridge does not simply emphasize difference. Rather, it redefines difference in potentially transformative ways. It illustrates what Anzaldúa describes as “a connectionist sense of spirit” ”

“El Mundo Zurdo represents a spirit-inflected, visionary approach to community building. According to Anzaldúa's theory of El Mundo Zurdo, it's possible (and indeed necessary) for very different people—from diverse backgrounds with a wide variety of needs, politics, experiences, and concerns—to co-exist and work together to enact revolutionary change. As she explains in “La Prieta”: “We are the queer groups, the people that don't belong anywhere, not in the dominant world nor completely within our own respective cultures. Combined we cover so many oppressions. But the overwhelming oppression is the collective fact that we do not fit, and because we do not fit, we are a threat””

...

“Anzaldúa's theory of El Mundo Zurdo originated in her daily life when, in the late 1970s, she organized poetry readings as the El Mundo Surdo Reading Series in San Francisco.20 This series was intentionally diverse and included people of all colors. Unlike many other progressive social-justice activists and theorists of this time period who were uniting into identity-specific groups (or, we could say, groups premised on some specific type of foundational sameness), Anzaldúa refused to self-segregate, instead resolutely creating alliances among people from a variety of different social locations. Despite the many differences among them, her El Mundo Surdo participants shared several commonalities, including their personal experiences of alienation, discrimination, and/or oppression; their interest in issues of social justice; their shared rejection of the status quo; their visionary beliefs in the transformational power of imagination and the spoken word; and their work as creative writers and artists.”

...

“Though most people self-define by what they exclude, we define who we are by what we include—what I call the new tribalism”... I want to underscore the importance of Anzaldúa's approach to differences. By shifting from exclusionary to inclusionary identity formation, she redefines differences as opportunities, or pathways, enabling us to forge complex commonalities. Anzaldúa grounds this nuanced approach in her metaphysics of interconnectedness—a spirit-infused worldview enabling broader, more inclusive contexts for difference. Defining each individual as part of a larger whole, she insists on a commonality spanning “everyone/everything”; despite our many differences, we “share a category of identity wider than any social position or racial label”... For Anzaldúa, this shared identity category is foundational, and enables her to replace the rigid boundaries imposed by status-quo stories with a relational approach.”

Michael White, drawing on the work of Barbara Myerhoff, has proposed the metaphor of membership for examining the relationships that shape our perceptions, intentions, and actions. He describes how knowledge arises in communities of knowers; how different things are counted to be true, worthwhile, or valuable in different communities. Our ethics, our purposes, and the possibilities we perceive for our lives are shaped by the people who have significant membership in our lives. White describes the all-too-common process through which therapists, in joining the community of legitimate, properly-degreed, licensed professionals leave behind the “diverse, historical, and local associations” of their lives, replacing them with the more limited associations of “the monoculture of psychotherapy.”

White describes various ways that membership in a monoculture leads to thin descriptions of our lives. He states that thin descriptions lead to thin conclusions—to limited ideas about what’s possible, and to fixed notions about what is. While White does not directly address this issue, we see the metaphor of boundaries as reinforcing of thin descriptions and thin conclusions. We think that a focus on clear, consistent, unambiguous boundaries can encourage people to limit their memberships in life—to treat what is outside the borders demarcated by their “boundaries” as foreign, other, not readily trusted, and probably not as meaningful as what is inside.

White argues that lives are richer when they are “multiply contextualized.” In multiply contextualized lives, there are more possibilities for thick description. A thinly described life can become more thickly described through a process of “re-membering.” The term “re-membering” refers both to revising one’s memberships in life (that is, choosing who we carry in our hearts and minds as members of our lives) and to remembering the stories of who we are and have been and what is and has been and can be possible within those memberships. As knowledge is remembered, regenerated, and reclaimed through the tellings and re-tellings that occur in multiple contexts, the possibilities for fulfillment multiply. We find “membership language” much more useful than “boundary language.” Acknowledging and participating in our preferred memberships can inspire our practice, whereas boundaries may limit it.

"Each person has a unique role to play to shift any situation – some might be in a good position to support the person harmed, whereas others might be in a better position to cultivate accountability with the person causing the harm. Some might have material resources to offer, others might organize community support, and still others might offer perspectives on the underlying roots of the violence. With more people, any situation can shift toward healing, accountability, and transformation.” Ann Russo in Guest Post: Strategies for Cultivating Community Accountability by Ann Russo via Prison Culture

There are many ways to define your role, and I encourage you to look closely at the language used by local organizers and community leaders to guide you. But I appreciate this framework created by Deepa Iyer from the Building Movement Project. Learn more about the map and definitions for each role (both PDFs linked are via the website).