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Healing Circles As Black Feminist Pedagogical Interventions

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Healing Circles As Black Feminist Pedagogical Interventions CHAPTER 16 Healing Circles as Black Feminist Pedagogical Interventions Jennifer L. Richardson Tuesday afternoon, teaching my course Black Feminism and Popular Culture, I’m confronted with weary students wrestling mainstream media representations of Black women. Oppression, violence, misogyny, and racism jump from the pages of the assigned readings—readings selected to provoke questions to which there are no easy answers. Frustrated, the students ask: “Why are we still seeing images of Black women in music videos represented and talked about as ‘bitches’ and ‘hoes’? Why is this just considered ‘normal’ and no one has a problem with it? Has anything really changed? How does reading this even do anything?” Specifically, the students thirst for strategies which will help them move beyond theo- rizing in privileged spaces, to more actively working toward collective freedom. Marginalized students of color (particularly Black women) often feel (re)traumatized by academic spaces in which they may experience debates and/or critiques as uncomfortable, isolating, and even violent. Navigating texts and spaces that don’t reflect their lives, these students are quite honest as they grapple with the denial of their identities and J.L. Richardson (*) Gender and Women’s Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA © The Author(s) 2018 281 O.N. Perlow et al. (eds.), Black Women’s Liberatory Pedagogies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65789-9_16 282 J.L. RICHARDSON humanity. Challenged in turn by their questions and demand for solu- tions, I find myself as a scholar and as an educator searching for a peda- gogy that keeps my students (and myself) moving forward through anger and frustration, toward a praxis that acknowledges pain without becoming paralyzed by it. However, it is admittedly quite difficult to both create and authentically practice feminist, anti-racist, and queer pedagogy in spaces that do not center community, or marginalized peo- ples’ knowledges and experiences. In response to that reality, I have been very purposeful in trying to transform my classrooms into communal spaces of healing (i.e. from epistemic violence) in which assumptions around credibility, truth, and knowledge are fundamentally challenged. I argue that in order to produce true social transformation and strive for a radical notion of collective freedom, we must pay attention not only to our political/ideological positions, but also to our individual and col- lective practices of self-care and healing—practices that are themselves deeply political. Pedagogies and praxis in the Black feminist tradition that are accountable to oppressed communities must take a serious look at healing, balance, and self-care as powerful forms of resistance to hege- monic cultures and structures. And although the Black feminist tradition has historically included radical self-care and well-being (see, e.g., the work of Toni Cade Bambara, Audre Lorde, and June Jordan to name a few), much has been lost in translation on the ground, in our research, and in the classroom. Indeed, by exploring healing as a political path of resis- tance and a radical spiritual project, this practice itself challenges the tradi- tional boundaries of academia. Specifically, this chapter focuses on the processes and potentials ofheal - ing circles, both within and outside of an academic setting, especially for Africana1 women struggling with the damaging effects of hegemonic, popular cultural ideas and images of Black “womanhood.” In the follow- ing sections, first I review the scholarly literature with which this work engages and the theoretical discussions in which I seek to intervene. Here, I elaborate on both what healing means, especially in the lives of Black women, and why healing is needed. Next, I discuss the context of my thinking by presenting healing circles as a pedagogical tool used in the classroom, with a diverse but sometimes predominantly white cisgendered student body, and how teaching a praxis of healing and self-care can be added to most curricula.2 This Black feminist pedagogy explores methods of healing, and imagines the dynamics and implications of such healing circles in our classrooms, professional, and activist spaces. HEALING CIRCLES AS BLACK FEMINIST PEDAGOGICAL INTERVENTIONS 283 BLACK FEMINIST PRAXIS: HEALING AS POLITICAL RESISTANCE The political citizenship (Harris-Perry, 2012) and humanity of women of color, and Black women in particular, is connected to their socio-political identity as a marginalized and oppressed group. The history of racism and sexism for Black women is a complicated and painful one. A large and valuable literature catalogs the vast inventory of harmful historical and contemporary representations of Black women (see, e.g., Akbar, 1984; Collins, 1989; Downing & Husband, 2005; Hall, 1990, 1997; hooks, 1992; Richardson, 2012; Richardson-Stovall, 2012). Thus Africana women who have been historically disenfranchised, colonized, objectified, and had their identities violently constructed must turn to the business of healing, self-recovery, and wholeness. In this chapter, I do not engage with healing practices or literature based in the disciplines of mainstream psychology, psychiatry, or self- help, which have historically been damag- ing to Black people (Guthrie, 1976; Hilliard, 1978; Jones, 1974). Instead, I am suggesting that we focus on the place of spirituality drawn from radi- cal Black feminist traditions as a pathway to a reclamation of self and com- munity, and an ability to articulate what Patricia Hill Collins (1991) calls the “subjugated knowledge” of a “Black feminist standpoint.”3 I argue that healing is an act of resistance to oppression that can pro- duce counter knowledge, celebrate the spirit, and foster community through affirmation and sharing, particularly as it pertains to Africana women. When I invoke the term “healing,” I seek a continuation of Audre Lorde’s (1976, 1984) work, which locates healing at the center of our interactions not just with ourselves, but also with our students, co- investigators/subjects, colleagues, and others. Merging insights from hooks (1994, 2005), Leary (2005), Collins (1998), Lorde (1976, 1984), and Ani (2000), in the healing circles that I conduct, I weave together a particular definition and description of healing that includes the following overlapping goals and stages: (1) decolonizing the mind, by “breaking with the ways our reality is defined and shaped by the dominant culture and asserting our understanding of that reality, of our own experiences” (hooks, 2005, p. xxxii); (2) finding and maintaining spaces of joy and affirmation—or reclaiming theliving room spaces and safe places in our lives (Jordan, 1985); (3) becoming less concerned with affluence and materialism (Collins, 1998; hooks, 1981, 2003) and instead focusing on self- determination and the reclamation of non-essentialized identities 284 J.L. RICHARDSON (e.g. cultural/ethnic or sexual identities), spaces, spirituality, knowledge, community, and lineage; and (4) recognizing and fostering critical aware- ness of a political path of resistance toward self- recovery and wholeness (Richardson-Stovall, 2012). African traditions predating slavery reveal that “Black women have relied on spirituality to sustain us, to renew our hope, to strengthen our faith” (hooks, 2005, p. 141). Few scholarly works include a concept of spirituality and political self-recovery beyond that associated with religious practice. In Transformative Feminisms, Leela Fernandez (2003) defines spirituality as “an understanding of self as encompassing body and mind, as well as spirit” (p. 10). She argues that a reclaimed and integrated spiri- tual and feminist praxis must deconstruct the false dichotomies between spirituality and religion, self and other, and theory and practice, thus allowing spiritual feminism to look toward self-transformation and lasting social change. However, whereas Fernandez urges us to look away from identity-based practice, I argue that a part of healing must involve Black women’s power to reclaim and redefine their identities. As Collins (1991) puts it: “If U.S. Black women cannot put ourselves in the center of our own intellectual and political work and claim identities as Black women, then who else will?” (p. 223). Thus a contemporary Black feminist ethos calls for disrupting, challenging, and radicalizing intellectual production through centering the voices, stories, experiences, and standpoints of Black women. This also points toward a conscious elimination of and intentional ceasing of the erasure and silencing of Black women in aca- demic and non-academic settings alike (see Christian, 1994; Hong, 2008), and instead the hyper exposure of our voices positioned and grounded in supportive spaces where we can thrive. This becomes possible when space is intentionally provided for healing practices in the classroom and beyond. A major aim of both my teaching and research has been to offer spaces for Africana women to access and explore a praxis of healing, while criti- cally challenging negative media representations, through the creation of counterspaces and counterstories. The challenge for my work has been to produce critiques of the hegemonic systems of media, culture, and aca- demic institutions that cannot be reduced to simply telling stories that white folks don’t know about. Relatedly, little academic work explores the complex and multidimensional ways that Black women negotiate, explore, resist, and heal from the politics
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