October 2022
Katelyn Anderson University of Calgary
“We have a lot to lose (both professionally and personally) if our knowledge is seen, not as special and singular, but as only one thread in the warp and woof of legitimate, valid social knowledge.”
*–Virginia Eubanks, 2009, p. 116*
I am struggling as I work and think towards what I want to spend the next few years researching. In *Double-Bound*, Eubanks writes about a moment for one of her active participants, Cosandra Jennings, when during a discussion about self-sufficiency, she pauses and says, “I just realized that my economic problems are not my economic problems. They’re society’s economic problems” (p. 121). For a large part of the past year I experienced a thick depression (my attempt at [this assignment last year](<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mdVpitW-juHII_tkQg0SmAGpNjaQqTFsZdmG0QfdwPY/edit#>) was partially grappling with it), and while I had known the feeling of crushing sadness, the flatness of depression left me with an uncharacteristic inability to care about … anything much at all. A lovely shake came from assigned readings for a seminar on neoliberalism. ‘Neoliberalism’ is one of those terms that is used by so many people for so many different things, that I had dismissed it without ever thinking much about it. In his book *Psychopolitics* (2017a), South Korean-born political philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes about the pervasive neoliberal dogma that personal failings are the reason for one's struggles, including inequality, and therefore are an individual responsibility. For Han, as with many other critical neoliberal scholars, the freedom offered by competitive individualism is a trap in which we subjectate ourselves as we look to constantly improve all aspects of ourselves. He writes, “today we do not deem ourselves subjects, but rather projects: always refashioning and reinventing ourselves” (2017a, p. 11). The needed push for me came with Han pointing to depression as an intended consequence of internalizing hegemonic neoliberal values. Depression, he writes in *The Agony of Eros*, “is a narcissistic malady” that “plunges the subject into itself” (2017b, p. 3). If one is too depressed, living too far within oneself, a mass movement, or even care for community is predictably out of reach. The reminder makes reading about Jennings’ “coming to consciousness of their position within structural social relations” (Eubanks, p. 121), quite relatable. Like Jennings, much of what I was going through was because of structural pressures; and we are not alone.
I wanted to start here because this is what I keep coming back to when thinking about where I feel driven to take any research I do. The year was grueling and, especially after the death of a close friend, I feel simultaneously thankful and angry. I am grateful I am starting to feel, if still grasping at, the safe ground of the otherside, and I also have a gnawing rage knowing that so many people have not yet, or may never be able to, crawl out of the flatness, what Han calls “the inferno of the same” (2017b, p. 1) – and that they will not be able to because that is the purposeful outcome of our neoliberal culture. It feels a bit precious to be finishing up my PhD course work and to be upset with ‘neoliberal society’ broadly; having a grounded topic of Canadian telecommunications digital divides policy to guide my masters’ research felt a lot steadier. I know that to be successful I need to focus my efforts on a case study; a limited, more manageable project. Yet as I run over ideas in my head, narrow topics seem frivolous compared to the compounding crises we are facing in 2022: climate destruction, rising income inequality, mental health and addiction, and our eroding democratic institutions. The work of scholars like Eubanks, Patricia Hill Collins, and Sara Ahmed, among others, offer a solidarity that these feelings are not unique; and are not new.
The drive to think carefully with and within our communities of scholarship (Ahmed, 2015), acknowledging the enormous debts we owe to those who have helped us to think is a welcome antidote to the pressure I – and I realize that pressure is likely overblown as a fledgling academic learning how to navigate these systems – feel from academic institutions to contribute an ‘original’ idea. Patricia Hill Collins’ work (1990) against the grain to explicitly include the voices of her community of black women is also inspiring in that not only are we not alone in our standpoints as academics, that we have multiple, shifting standpoints. And that those standpoints overlap and sway and should be acknowledged; which not only works to make one feel less alone, but that functions to make our work stronger. I have gratitude, of course, also to other authors whose work we’ve looked at this term, including Donna Haraway (1988) and Sandra Harding, and also to have supportive and intellectually stimulating faculty members that have guided me towards these authors, and that challenge my thinking. Having this scholarship to ground me is encouraging as I look to my own myriad communities and the compounding problems we face; that whatever topic I land on for my research does not have to be especially special, or to feel brand new. That I can work to chip away, however incrementally, at the problems we, together, are facing and that that will be constructive. That it makes sense that solutions I may come up with will be obvious to me and to others: because we live and think through these circumstances everyday.
What ethnography offers me, then, and in particular participatory action research (PAR) as Eubanks describes it, is a way to do work that seems obvious. I do not have to come up with original solutions, because likely there are not any, and because my work can be in amplifying the voices of, and thinking with, my peers. Eubanks is clear that PAR is hard, and it comes with risks. As academics striving to make research plans we hope will have a positive contribution it can be counterintuitive to loosen our grip on our carefully laid plans. That as “committed to extending technological decision-making as many of us are in theory, sharing control of our own research agendas and our institutional resources with nonacademic members of social movements and local communities still seems to befuddle us, to make us defensive and wary” (p. 107). And yet, if we are committed to continuously analyzing our own standpoints and to trust in our peers, it requires collaboration to be seeped through our entire process. From my own experiences witnessing the wisdom of people of all educational backgrounds around me – and for my desire to be in community – I hope I can continue to grow the time and pay the attention needed not to let fear of individual failure overtake the urge to work closely within my communities. Doing feminist participatory and action research, Eubanks helpfully reminds us, requires “maintaining a steadfast commitment to the fact that people are basically smart, understand their own problems, and have agency in their own lives” (p. 110). I am not under the illusion that escaping the ethics of neoliberalism will be easy, or even likely. I know it will require constant commitments on many fronts, but grounding my own work in feminist scholarship like Eubanks’ and others is a good start. Acknowledging out loud, and often, that our communities are imbued with “valid social knowledge” (Eubanks, p. 116) is a reminder that as scholars we do not, and should not, fabricate solutions to our shared problems alone, but intentional, thoughtful work will be part of a shared fabric towards common goals.
References
Ahmed, S. (2015, December 30). Feminist shelters. Feminist Klljoys. https://feministkilljoys.com/2015/12/30/feminist-shelters/
Eubanks, V. (2009). Double-bound: Putting the power back into participatory research. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies (Boulder) 30(1), 107–137.
Han, B. (2017a). Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and the New Technologies of Power. Verso.
Han, B. (2017b). The Agony of Eros. MIT Press.
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies 14(3), 575–599.
Hill Collins, P. (2003). Towards an Afrocentric feminist epistemology. In Y. S. Lincoln & N. K. Denzin (Eds.), Turning points in qualitative research: Tying knots in a handkerchief (pp. 47–72). AltaMira Press. (Original work published 1990).