Creative Writing and Decolonizing Intersectional Feminist Critical Reflexivity: Challenging Neoliberal,Gendered,White,Colonial Practice Norms in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Creative writing during the COVID-19 pandemic can serve as a decolonizing intersectional feminist method for critical self-reflexivity. We share responses to the prompt: “If my therapeutic practice came with a warning label in COVID-19, what would it say?” and provide an analysis of the neoliberalism, whiteness, and colonialism embedded in our creative writing and practice. Engaging in critical self-reflexivity through metaphor carries potential for revealing hidden gendered, racialized, colonial, and neoliberal biases and norms related to social work practice, particularly when done in a collaborative, dialogic manner. We conclude by providing possible creative writing prompts that might be used in social work practice, supervision, and teaching to advance existing practices of self-reflexivity in social work both during and beyond the pandemic.

Keywords

critical race theory intersectionality decolonization critical reflexivity feminism‌social work practice arts-based research creative writing‌

COVID-19 has both revealed and exacerbated existing societal inequalities, power relationships, and oppressive structures (Bernard, 2020; Bowleg, 2020; Czymara et al., 2021; Laster Pirtle, 2020). For example, Bromfield et al. (2021) discussed the ways in which sex workers, particularly those who are racialized, trans, and/or undocumented, have been put at much higher risks in terms of health, safety, financial access, and criminalization. Similarly, Cross and Gonzalez Benson (2020) report on the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on immigrant communities, including heightened border restrictions and immigration policies, family separations, loss of employment, and gaps in health policies. In both articles, the authors argue that it is even more important during this time for social workers to engage from a critical intersectional feminist lens that carefully considers overlapping systems of power; this perspective allows social workers, whether working in direct practice with individuals, families or groups, advocating for resources and/or challenging structural barriers, to more accurately understand the difficulties that the COVID-19 pandemic poses for those facing heightened inequities. Further, given social work's history of complicity with unjust and inequitable policies and practices (Badwall, 2014; Jeffery, 2007; Yee, 2017), an intentional exploration of the ways in which various axes of oppression and privilege influence how we respond to those with whom we work is essential.

As scholar-activists, we both engage in critical scholarship and practice at micro, mezzo, and macro levels, working to examine and challenge how all levels of social work are complicit with or can work to disrupt systems of white supremacy, hetero/sexism, colonialism, and classism. However, as we entered into shelter-in-place in Ontario, Canada in March 2020, our direct practices were rapidly relegated to online counseling and clinical supervision, and thus was the primary social work practice we were experiencing. Although not all models incorporate a decolonizing and intersectional feminist analysis, we believe that critical reflexivity is an essential component of all critical social work practice (Fook, 2015; Miehls & Moffat, 2000). During the pandemic, we noticed our additional urgency to search for tools and practices to help us process the upheavals happening in our world and ourselves. We also felt an ethical imperative to engage with new forms of critical self-reflexivity to reflect on our virtual micro-practice work and to aid other social workers and social work students do the same during these times of transition.

This conceptual piece began as a collaborative exchange between two white cisgender women who straddle social work academia and direct micro-practice. At the time of writing this article, Christine Mayor (Author 1) was a PhD student in social work and board-certified trainer and registered drama therapist and Shoshana Pollack (Author 2) was a tenured professor and advisor in social work and registered clinical social worker. Although we have a supervisory relationship (Pollack is the Mayor's dissertation advisor) we have collaborated on our shared scholarly, teaching, and practice interests over the years. Therefore, Pollack reached out to Mayor for ideas about using the arts to navigate her reactions that were arising around the pandemic through her new online clinical practice. Mayor had experience using creative writing for her own therapeutic processing and recommended a series of creative writing prompts that she had collected and created over her years as a drama therapist. While these prompts were reimagined by Mayor as a way to critically reflect upon emotional and embodied responses to the pandemic, they were inspired by existing writing exercises (e.g., Bolton et al., 2006; Stein, 2018).

Through our own personal creative writing and our discussions with one another, we began to understand more deeply how our direct micro-practice work was changing. Specifically, we noticed that gendered, colonial, and racialized norms articulated through neoliberal therapeutic discourses (which are explored in detail below) became heightened under the pressure we felt to appear “professional” during the pandemic. For example, we, like our clients and supervisees, faced life-altering changes and fear for the safety of ourselves and loved ones; we were supporting individuals who were struggling, while also experiencing significant overlaps in our own lives. Simultaneously, we felt tension between Euro-Western social work “professional” norms regarding self-disclosure and affect during sessions and our belief in the importance of decolonizing and disrupting these ideas. As part of our own decolonizing work as settlers, we have been learning through an Indigenous social work program in our faculty how to better understand and challenge the ways that Western social work enacts colonial norms of maintaining distance and “expertise,” and often maintains a separation between body, mind, emotions, and spirit.

Together, we decided to respond to the same creative writing prompt in order to reflect on how our individual reactions may reflect a colonized mindset about micro-practice, as well as how they might be connected to larger systemic processes, structures, and forces. To do this, Mayor adapted an existing popular writing prompt (“If I came with a warning label, what would it say?”) in order to specifically focus our reflection on how the pandemic was influencing us and our work (“If my clinical practice came with a warning label in COVID-19, what would it say?”¹). We then engaged in a collaborative critical analysis together that explored how our personal reactions were deeply connected to the political forces at play. As we supported each other in our online counseling practices using this writing and analysis, we shifted towards thinking more deeply about the value of this type of critical self-reflective process to shed light upon the myriad ways colonial, gendered, classed, and racialized norms seep into the practices of white settler social work. In the conceptual article that follows, we discuss the importance and limitations of reflexivity in social work, share our experimentations with creative writing as a decolonizing intersectional feminist practice of critical reflexivity (DIFCR), and provide possible implications for social work.

The Need for Decolonizing Intersectional Feminist Practice of Critical Reflexivity (DIFCR) in Social Work

Reflexivity is often described as a reflective practice on the role that one's individual and collective experiences has had on how they see the world, conduct research, and engage in practice (D’Cruz et al., 2007). Critical reflexivity in social work practice focuses on how experiences with power and oppression in historical and current structural contexts shape practice and relationships with clients (Fook, 2002; Fook & Gardner, 2007; Pease & Fook, 1999). It also invites social workers to consider how they might “uphold and reproduce social structures and oppression even though they might just be doing their job with good intentions” (Mattsson, 2014, p. 9). Social work students are often taught to individually journal and reflect on themselves in order to assess how their feelings, biases, and worldviews may impact their relationships with clients (Badwall, 2016). While there is some debate about the overlap and potential differentiation between reflexivity and critical reflection (D’Cruz et al., 2007; Fook, 1999), we include both in the following discussion as they are often used interchangeably in the literature. Furthermore, while there is a large body of scholarship on reflexivity in research, we will primarily focus on those who discuss the ethical importance of reflexivity in social work practice.

Reflexivity as an Intersectional Feminist Practice

Feminist researchers have long discussed the importance of reflexivity and understanding how one's lived experiences shape the ways in which problems are identified, questions are asked, and theories are selected to guide practice and research (e.g., Haraway, 1988; Harding, 1987; Hesse-Biber & Piatelli, 2012; Smith, 1987). Hesse-Biber and Piatelli (2012) describe reflexivity as a “communal process” that involves examining the “structural, political, and cultural environments” of all who are involved (p. 560). Social workers have argued that critical reflection is a necessary way to understand how social workers’ lived experiences, feelings, practice frameworks, and social structures influence their practice (D’Cruz et al., 2007). Yet, Connolly (2018) argues that reflective practices may be uplifted in “feminised professions,” including social work, but this does not necessarily translate into an intersectional feminist practice. Similarly, Anderson-Nathe et al. (2013) argue, “social work research and social work feminist research frequently reproduces practices and narratives associated with whiteness, middle class, and benevolent work” (p. 277). Despite the importance of their contributions, too often feminist scholarship has centered on white, cis, straight, and middle-class women by focusing on the impact of patriarchy without interrogating the ways in which ideologies and systems of whiteness, colonization, classism, sexuality, etc. also deeply influence who we are, what we think, and how we act. As Charter (2021) argues, “Feminist viewpoints that have ignored women of color have ignored women; feminist viewpoints that have ignored women in poverty have ignored women” (p. 120).

In order to address these kinds of gaps described above, intersectionality was developed by Crenshaw (1991) to draw specific attention to the ways in which intersecting systems of oppression—sexism, racism, and others—combine to create unique experiences of oppression for Black women. Mattsson (2014) both honors the critical contributions of Jan Fook for introducing a method of critical reflection for social work, while also arguing that gender, sexuality, class, and race must be more explicitly foregrounded in the analysis. Thus, a true intersectional feminist lens ensures that specific attention is paid to not only sexism, but also to the way that racism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, etc. are interwoven, interlocking, and in complex relationships (Colpean & Tully, 2019; Connolly, 2018; Jones, 2010; Mattsson, 2014). We would argue that while Mattsson's (2014) call for incorporating intersectionality into social work reflexivity is an important contribution, she does not explicitly address the colonial history of social work, nor offer decolonizing approaches to the practice.

Reflexivity as a Decolonizing Practice

The need for reflective practices on the impact of historic and ongoing colonial systems is often left out of calls for reflexivity made by settlers. In contrast, a decolonizing approach to reflexivity explicitly centers the ongoing exploration of how we have been impacted by and may continue to perpetuate colonialism in our social work practice, particularly given the roots of social work as a form of colonial control (Kennedy-Kish (Bell) et al., 2017). Indigenous scholars have long argued that any knowledge, including social work knowledge, is not objective or neutral but rather is intimately connected to the land, relationships, and holistic experiences (Absolon, 2011; Kovach, 2009; Smith, 1999; Wilson, 2008). Thus, part of an Indigenous worldview in social work includes individuals locating themselves, their values, and their knowledge within their collective identity as an essential part of the helping process (Absolon, 2009, 2016; Baskin, 2016; Hart, 2002; Gray et al., 2008; Kennedy-Kish (Bell) et al., 2017; Sinclair et al., 2009; Walsh et al., 2018). Baskin (2016) further argues that self-reflexivity and locating one's self and relationships should not be relegated to supervision or private reflection, but needs to be shared with clients, asking: “How are we ever going to know what the impact is [of our social location] if we do not acknowledge and share aspects about ourselves that are relevant in the helping process? When a young mother comes to a social worker, does she not have the right to know if this worker is a mother?” (p. 37).

Further, Indigenous social work scholars understand the social work relationship in holistic terms; both the helper and the person receiving support bring their full selves - spirit, body, emotion, and mind - to the encounter (Absolon, 2009; Baskin, 2016; Walsh et al., 2018). Thus, a decolonizing approach to reflexivity would engage the practitioner's whole self: where we are from; how we see the world; our emotional, physical, cognitive, and spiritual wellbeing; and accountability to ancestors, land, and community.

Creativity and the Arts in Reflexivity

Self-reflexivity is commonly explored as a cognitive practice; however, we were interested in exploring methods of reflexivity that might incorporate holistic and creative approaches. A few previous publications have addressed social workers using poetry as a method of self-reflexivity (e.g., Alvarez, 2020; Beltrán, 2019) and self-reflection (e.g., Furman, Lietz, et al., 2006; Furman et al., 2008). In her “Poems in the pandemic,” Alvarez (2020) articulated, “Poetry helps us to remember our embodied knowing, it can be a tool for storytelling, or it can simply provide a moment of reflection and reprieve. Maybe we smile. Maybe we sigh” (p. 307). Her work speaks to the ways in which the body may be incorporated through the use of the arts in reflexivity. Similarly, Martin-Cuellar's (2018) “discursive reflectivity” (p. 69) distinguishes this form of writing from self-reflection, describing a writing process that is not merely cognitive but also emotional and embodied. From an Indigenous perspective, Walsh et al. (2018) describe using photos of the land and storytelling in a circle as an approach for decolonizing social work students’ reflexive process and as a response to the Truth and Reconciliation's Calls to Action (2015). Additionally, Beltrán (2019) described her feminist methodological approach to self-reflexivity using poetry as a form of storytelling that involves the body, mind, heart, and spirit. In our experimentations with creative writing, connecting with our emotions, body, and spirit/imagination has helped us to distill our complex experiences during this difficult time into a few short paragraphs more holistically. The use of metaphor was crucial in ‘feeling into’ our full selves as we wrote, rather than simply intellectualizing our experiences.

Further, creative writing and the arts in social work can be used as a way to get inside, around, and under taken for granted discourses and privileges (Sinding et al., 2014). As Cross and Holyoake (2017) stated, “Poetic thinking and writing … encourages un-concealing or uncovering through allusions, syntax and unexpected metaphors” (p. 543). Similarly, Furman, Langer, et al. (2006) argue that metaphor is both at the heart of poetry and social work practice, allowing individuals the distance to discuss difficult issues, see and understand life patterns within a social context, and open up new ways of engaging. In our experience experimenting with these creative writing prompts, this approach helped us to uncover aspects of ourselves and society that are sometimes more difficult to bring to awareness. It also helped us to uncover holistic ways of knowing about our experiences during the pandemic and the social and colonial structures which discipline our practice. Importantly, when sharing together our creative writing and engaging in relational reflexivity, we were better able to uncover biases and assumptions we were holding, as well as name the societal pressures we were facing when attempting to provide care during this time. For us, reflecting in relationship with each other helped us to deepen our critical analysis and to hold one another accountable through a DIFCR lens.

Limitations of Reflexivity

Colpean and Tully (2019) speak to the dangers of “white feminism” that utilizes a kind of “weak reflexivity” where racism and other forms of oppression are only explored in a shallow and performative way, functioning to reinforce whiteness and other dominant ideologies. Badwall (2016) powerfully critiques the ways in which “critical reflexivity” may operate as a tool of regulation, whiteness, and coloniality, continuing this harmful legacy of the social work profession. Drawing on Ahmed's (2004) critique of the non-performativity of declarations of whiteness, Badwall argues that the kind of confessional quality of reflexivity whereby largely white female social workers engage in “good practice” by admitting to “bad” biased practice serves to reproduce the idea of the innocent and morally superior white colonial “helper.” As she writes, “To admit bad practice is to restore one's sense of self as a good, loving, and in its contemporary manifestation, a critical social work subject” (Badwall, 2016, p. 8). Further, Jones (2010) argues that reflexivity should not be comfortable or absolving, writing, “Reflexivity has got to hurt. Reflexivity is laborious” (p. 124). He argues that the goal of reflexivity is to help individuals acknowledge their complicity in oppression and use this knowledge to act differently.

Badwall (2016) further suggests that racialized social workers may be silenced by their employers and the ethical imperative of being “reflexive” about their own power. In this way, reflexivity from a “client-centered” perspective may render racialized social workers unable to speak meaningfully about the racism they may face by their white clients. Despite this critique, we do believe that a decolonizing intersectional feminist critical reflexivity approach may offer practice for continuous reflection on how various systems of power influence, constraint, and discipline our work in ways that take into better account the “multiplicity of subject positions that shape the identities of workers and clients” (Badwall, 2016, p. 11). Rather than focus on a kind of power binary between worker and client, we believe that a decolonizing intersectional feminist approach allows for a more complex analysis of how power operates in practice and may invite counter-narratives from racialized and otherwise marginalized social workers.

It is important to note that writing and engaging with this material from a critical self-reflexive state is not necessarily a given, and therefore must be actively cultivated. For example, Furman et al. (2008) share examples of reflective poetry assignments written by social work students while visiting Nicaragua for a course and discuss the importance of interrupting neo-imperialism; however, the poetry examples shared often uncritically reinforce, rather than interrupt, tropes of (white) saviourism and “poverty tourism.” We want to be clear that reflexivity, regardless of the critical theories or the creative approach used, is not a panacea for uprooting the white, colonial, classist, ablest, and hetero/sexist roots of the social work profession or the inequitable systems in society. Reflexivity alone does nothing to change these systems of power; this requires different actions that move beyond the individual level and towards collective solidarity. As Jones (2010) writes, “My heart wants me to take action, with my body to make some change, and not just write about it” (p. 122). Below we explore how a creative approach to DIFCR provided an opportunity for us to carefully consider whether our actions were reinforcing or challenging these inequitable systems, and to move from reflection into action from a place of relational accountability.

Experimenting with Creative Writing as a DIFCR Practice

In order to demonstrate this creative approach to DIFCR practice, we share our experimentations with the prompt: “If my therapeutic practice came with a warning label in COVID-19, what would it say?” Below, we present our individual creative writing responses and then provide aspects of our collaborative analysis of the embedded assumptions present in our creative writing. Believing, as Beltrán (2019) argues, that “self-reflexivity is inherently relational” (p. 147), we decided to intentionally engage in a practice of critical assessment, reflection, and dialogue about our creative writing. Notably, we did not approach the assessment and dialogue of our writing from a qualitative research perspective, but rather a self-reflexive one. To this end, we did not engage in a formal process of data analysis (e.g., coding, looking for themes, etc.), but instead read over both warning label contributions using a decolonizing and intersectional feminist lens to explore what was present and missing in our reflections in terms of power, practice norms, and ideology.

In our multiple readings and discussions, we did identify several common threads in our writing posteriori: counseling as a neoliberal, disembodied product; colonial and gendered norms in micro-practice; and the presence and absence of our whiteness. Together, these provide a conceptual framework for challenging common white, colonial, patriarchal, and neoliberal therapeutic logics about the use of self and ethical practice within the therapeutic relationship, which are shared below.

If My Therapeutic Practice in COVID-19 Came With a Warning Label

Author 1: Mayor

WARNING! This product is not up to typical manufacturing standards. May enter session with low battery life and broken parts. Prepare for brief moments of inattention and repetition, sudden shifts in mood, and an inability to access hope. May contain higher levels of grief than is recommended and result in unexpected leakiness.

Proceed with caution, as this product will not clean up the reality of the suffering that existed before or during this pandemic, and will reject any attempts to provide brief, solution-focused, goals. Keep product away from messages of “this is an opportunity to be more productive” or “everything happens for a reason” or “this was intended to remind us of what really matters.” When placed in close proximity of this toxic positivity, this product may spontaneously combust with rage.

Most of the positive side effects are likely to be unintentional, yet may be claimed as part of a carefully planned therapeutic intervention. But I will show up for you each week, no matter how imperfectly, to let you know that you matter; that someone is thinking about you and cares about what happens to you. No other results are guaranteed.

Author 2: Pollack

WARNING! If you are accessing this product during a time of a natural disaster, war, pandemic, or nuclear accident, be warned that similarities in lived experience of the disaster may overload circuits. During a global pandemic, for example, an excess amount of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty may cause the product to lack humor, spontaneity, and vigor. Safeguards that are normally in place to ensure optimal functioning may be disengaged resulting in unusual emotionalities, such as watery eyes, inarticulate commentary, and/or irreverence.

Please note: With proper care, although background apps will be running, this product will continue to operate efficiently. Background apps, while not visible to the user, do draw energy and may deplete the battery if not adequately recharged. For the most part, proper maintenance and auto updates are programmed at regular intervals. You are not required to do anything to maintain product health. This product will improve with time as new means of connection are discovered and opened.

Performance is significantly enhanced by economic stability, good health, and a comfortable home.

Content may fizzle out with overuse.

Counseling as Neoliberal, Disembodied Product

Pollack and Rossiter (2010) state that “neoliberalism extends economic calculation into traditionally non-economic arenas, including identity itself” (p. 156). Drawing upon Foucauldian notions of the self and governmentality studies, they analyze from a feminist perspective how recipients of social work services are constructed through neoliberal discourses in ways that emphasize the primacy of self-reliance, efficiency, rationality, and measurable change. The “entrepreneurial self” as expressed through social work services is expected to be motivated, compliant and autonomous, and submitting to the masculinized and colonial state (Pollack, 2009). The tension in social work practice between social justice and market-based values and practices has been at play since the 1980s (Brown, 2021). Aligned with neoliberal values and ideologies which fixate on self-reliance, individualization, and efficiency (Pollack & Rossiter, 2010), short term, solution-focused practices in mental health encourage practitioners to adopt biomedical or cognitive-behavioral approaches (Brown, 2021). Further, as Indigenous social work practitioners have argued, these neoliberal pressures have also resulted in disembodied and non-relational helping relationships (Kennedy-Kish (Bell) et al., 2017).

As we analyzed our responses to the writing prompt, we wondered about the extent to which we had internalized gendered notions of the entrepreneurial self when providing counseling services. Here, we direct ideas about the entrepreneurial self onto the practitioner, as our reflective writing illuminated the neoliberal creep into our own identities as counselors.

Our responses to the product metaphor prompt highlighted for us two interrelated processes in regard to gendered and colonial neoliberal discourses. We are trying to both talk back to the market-driven discourse that practitioners are providing a product that needs to be fully functional (read: disembodied and autonomous) and to also refocus the relational and contextual nature of therapeutic services. Both pieces intentionally call into question the idea that the “product” of counseling or therapy should always be fully functioning at an optimal level. This implies that we are a kind of non-sentient service designed only to meet the needs of the person for whom the service is intended and the needs of the profit-driven mental health industry. Indeed, by writing about “this product,” our pieces emphasize the way that our work and selves are positioned as capital. In author 1's piece, the intentional switch from the third person language of “this product” to the first person language of “I” was an attempt to disrupt these neoliberal pressures, asserting a relational instead of transactional nature of therapy.

While neoliberal capitalist discourses were certainly present within social work practice prior to COVID-19, we have found this message particularly amplified in the climate of continued productivity and even hyper-productivity during a lockdown. Mayor's piece warns against the common discourses of productivity and toxic positivity that have been ubiquitous both in and out of social work circles. Our writing rejects the “efficient” neoliberal practice methods that are brief, solution-focused, and rigidly goal oriented as the answer to structural harms. Our pieces call attention to the ways in which our full humanity (i.e., having emotions in response to the pandemic) might be framed in the Euro-Western neoliberal context as deficiencies or brokenness and perhaps implicitly reproductive of common admonitions of clients who are described as lacking emotional self-regulation or having poor boundaries. We write against these narratives to amplify a more fulsome and relational conceptualization of the counseling relationship than might be suggested through neoliberal social micro-practice approaches.

Colonial and Gendered Norms in Micro-Practice

Both pieces emphasize how practitioners are also being deeply impacted by the changes in our world, reflected in our language about “low batteries” (both authors), “overloaded circuits” (Pollack), and “broken parts” (Mayor). The warning labels draw attention to our intense emotionality, including grief, hopelessness, rage, fear, sadness, and anxiety. We see reflected in our writing our worries that these real feelings might show or that we might be considered unfit to support others. Further, these concerns reflect internalized stereotypes about women's emotionality as being irrational and damaging (Shields, 1987), as well as mainstream social work prohibitions about revealing practitioners' emotions or inner world. In this way, we see how intersecting patriarchal and colonial norms of ethical boundaries require us to privilege cognitive presence over emotional, embodied, or spiritual presence. Further, our writing reveals our own expectations of what being a “good practitioner” means; that real life should not interfere and our vulnerabilities ought to be hidden. Yet in practice, both of us did in fact share with our clients, at selected moments, the uncertainties, anxieties, and challenges of living through a lockdown and the pandemic more generally. These authentic relational moments bump up against dictums that police therapeutic boundaries related to self-disclosure. They challenge white, colonial therapeutic talk about ethical practice and how we must discipline ourselves into the “competent practitioner” by ignoring parts of ourselves (Mandell, 2007).

This critique is not a new one. Indeed, Indigenous social work scholars have long argued that the severing off of ourselves during the helping process is an artifact of white settler colonial constructions (Absolon, 2009, 2016; Baskin, 2016; Hart, 2002; Gray et al., 2008; Kennedy-Kish (Bell) et al., 2017; Sinclair et al., 2009). Indigenous methods of helping prioritize relational accountability and reciprocity between those offering and receiving support. Awareness of the interconnectedness between body, mind, spirit, and emotions is foundational to Indigenous practice. Authenticity, rather than prohibitions related to self-disclosure and boundaries, is foundational to decolonizing social work practice. We have found an opportunity within the context of our counseling practices during the COVID-19 pandemic, to reflect upon and enact an ethics of relationality and authenticity that is often underemphasized in colonial schools of social work. Like in our creative writing pieces, we have actively brought more transparency to our sessions with clients and supervisees, discussing the ways that we too have been impacted by these times as a way to normalize, validate, and honor our experiences and the way they intersect with those we work to support. We do not pretend that we have the pandemic “handled,” but rather we attempt to share more honestly the ways that our struggles might overlap and where our experiences of privilege and difficulties may differ.

The Presence and Absence of Our Whiteness

We also examined our writing for the presence and absence of various axes of privilege. Pollack writes about how her own employment status, class privilege, and health and able-bodiedness cushion her against many of the socio-economic and political impacts of the pandemic. While Mayor does not explicitly articulate her own privileged social locations in the piece, she does attempt to name structural inequities when discussing the suffering that existed prior to the pandemic. In analyzing our creative writing, we saw that both our gendered and racial social locations were not explicitly mentioned. However, it was easier for us to see the taken-for-granted-ness of our female-identified selves and the ways in which our writing responses reflect various gendered norms and assumptions. The fact of our whiteness though is noticeably absent in our text and from our first round of collaborative analyses of our writing, speaking to the ubiquity of white privilege. Similarly, in our description of ourselves as a product, we imply its whiteness and thus the ways in which our racial privilege circumscribes our practice. It was only when we specifically asked ourselves what was missing from our writing from a DIFCR lens that our whiteness came into our focus.

This is part of the discursive power of whiteness: the assumption of whiteness as universal, invisible, and the right not to be named (e.g., Jeyasingham, 2012; Jiwani, 2006). Indeed, whiteness is so embedded in therapeutic and social work practice (e.g., Badwall, 2014; Davis & Gentlewarrior, 2015; Jeffery, 2005; Jeffery, 2007; Lee & Bhuyan, 2013; Todd, 2011; Yee, 2017) that in our initial writing of these pieces in April 2020, we could choose not to name our white privilege. This absence is present as we reflect in this socio-political historical moment where white people are being called to account for how we are complicit with anti-Black racism, systemic state violence committed by the police, and the ways in which inequitable healthcare, housing, poverty, and the stress of living in a place dominated by white supremacy has led to disproportionate COVID-19 deaths for Black, Indigenous, and racialized people. That neither of us mentioned our whiteness in our creative writing speaks to how we have benefitted from white supremacy both during and previous to COVID-19. The clinical product of which we speak in our reflective pieces is thus white and our descriptions are a product of whiteness.

Our reflections on our creative writings and therapeutic practice during the pandemic have also been impacted by the public murder of George Floyd in the United States of America and so many others in the United States of America and Canada, and the resulting anti-racist and Black Lives Matter protests around the world. Again, our personal and political responses intersect simultaneously with those of our clients, particularly for those who are Black, and require an authentic presence and response from our positionalities. The practice of writing creatively deepened our reflections on our relational accountability as white practitioners with our clients. For example, Pollack has included discussions of her own whiteness and complicity with her Black clients, as they sort through their own rage and sadness with her. Mayor has opened sessions with her white clients discussing her own complicity in whiteness, intentionally engaging in conversations about their individual and shared roles in either maintaining or working to dismantle white supremacy. Conversations about racism, white supremacy, and power require us to respond with our full selves and not to pretend that our identities and experiences in the world do not impact our relationships with those we support or our counseling practices more broadly. While these are not the first times we are having these discussions about race and power with our clients, this current political moment, coupled with the kinds of critical self-reflexive unlearning we have been doing using creative writing, have provided new ways of engaging in anti-racist and anti-colonial accountability in our feminist practices.

Implications of DIFCR for Social Work

Engaging together in creative writing and reflection provided us a different sort of space in which to uncover neoliberal, white, patriarchal, and colonial forms of counseling practices that we both embody and challenge. The warning label metaphor helped to make transparent some of the personal, social, professional, and political currents in our therapeutic relationships, thus leading to greater personal and relational accountability. It is important to note that while we do think that using a metaphor can help facilitate this practice of decolonizing intersectional feminist critical reflexivity, used on its own may serve merely to reify existing ideas and narratives. Indeed, as Badwall (2016) writes, “Although critical reflexivity is an important intervention in social work, it is not without its critiques, worries, and hesitations” (p. 17). Thus, we believe the second part of the practice of critically analyzing the writing for what is present and what is missing, specifically through questions about power and ideology, is necessary in order to challenge taken for granted assumptions. Furthermore, engaging in this analysis collaboratively led to a deeper analysis as we shared observations about our own and each other's writing, and is part of a DIFCR commitment to relationality and collective accountability.

Importantly, this article is limited as a conceptual piece. While it is grounded in the existing literature, our previous practice and teaching experience, and careful reflections on our experimentations, we have not conducted formal research on the use of these creative practices of self-reflexivity and cannot yet speak to the short- or long-term impact of this approach. We hope that future research will focus on the impact of this practice on the social worker and on their setting, clients, and/or policy work.

Further, the reflections shared in this article are limited by the focus on our experiences transitioning to online micro-practice during the pandemic. Nevertheless, we believe that engaging in this kind of decolonizing intersectional feminist critical reflexive practice of creative writing may have wider applications to mezzo and macro social work practice settings both during and post-pandemic. We would argue that actively striving to understand how one's lived experiences and position in the world impacts social work policy, supervision, research, institutional work, and direct practice may be aided by the use of metaphor, holistic assessment, and collaborative analysis and reflection, regardless of the social work setting. Indeed, since this initial experimentation, Mayor has used this creative writing prompt and others when teaching and supervising social workers and drama therapists during the pandemic, with individuals describing both relief in processing their own experiences and greater capacity to uncover and challenge some of the biases and assumptions they were perpetuating in practice settings. This included using creative writing to reflect on how individual experiences with the pandemic were influencing their work in new ways in interpersonal violence shelters, K-12 schools, homeless shelters, health research, training institutes, and private practice therapy with adults and children.

Additional possible creative writing prompts² that might be used with new and experienced social workers in a variety of practice settings for writing and collaborative analysis might include:

If your experience of the pandemic was a song or piece of music, what would it be and why? If one of your more privileged aspects of your identity changed (e.g., race, gender identity, socio-economic status, housing status, etc.), what song or piece of music might your experience of the pandemic be? Write about your comparison of the two.

In relationship to your social work practice, write about staying quiet when you felt like shouting, or write about shouting when you might have stayed quiet.

If your body could talk during a session with X client or when implementing X policy, what would it say?

Think about the role white supremacy has had on your social work practice. What weather pattern would it be and why?

Sit or walk outside for 30 min. What lessons about your social work journey do you find after spending time in relationship with the land?

We hope that engaging in these practices may help both students and experienced social workers to continue to consider their relationship to challenging or reproducing harmful ideologies and structures, and that these reflective processes might lead to further critical and social justice-oriented actions. We invite you to experiment with how creative writing might open a space for you and others to engage with social work practice more holistically using emotions, body, and spirit, as well as to consider what assumptions about ethical practice, social work, and your position in the world emerge in the practice.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Christine Mayor

Shoshana Pollack

Notes

Author Biographies

Christine Mayor is an incoming assistant professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Her scholarship focuses on critical perspectives on trauma, anti-Black racism and whiteness, education, and arts-based work. She is also a board certified trainer and registered drama therapist.

Shoshana Pollack is a professor in the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Her areas of research and scholarship are the criminalization of women, prison education, and women’s mental health. In addition to her academic work, Shoshana maintains a small private psychotherapy practice in Toronto, ON.

References

Absolon

(2009). Navigating the landscape of practice: Dbaagmowin of a helper. In Sinclair

Hart

Bruyere

(Eds.), Wicihitowin: Aboriginal social work in Canada (pp. 172–199). Fernwood Publishing.

Absolon

K. E.

(2011). Kaandossiwin: How we come to know. Fernwood Publishing.

Absolon

K. E.

(2016). Wholistic and ethical: Social inclusion with Indigenous peoples. Social Inclusion, 4(1), 44–56. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v4i1.444

Ahmed

(2004). Declarations of whiteness: The non-performativity of anti-racism. Borderlands, 3(2). https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20050616083826/http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol3no2_2004/ahmed_declarations.htm

Alvarez

A. R. G.

(2020). Poems in the pandemic. Affilia, 35(3), 305–308. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109920936768

Anderson-Nathe

Gringeri

Wahab

(2013). Nurturing “critical hope” in teaching feminist social work research. Journal of Social Work Education, 49(2), 277–291. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2013.768477

Badwall

(2016). Critical reflexivity and moral regulation. Journal of Progressive Human Services, 27(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/10428232.2016.1108169

Badwall

H. K.

(2014). Colonial encounters: Racialized social workers needing professional scripts of whiteness. Intersectionalities: A Global Journal of Social Work Analysis, Research, Polity, and Practice, 5(1), 8–19. Available at: https://journals.library.mun.ca/ojs/index.php/IJ/article/view/996.

Baskin

(2016). Strong helpers’ teachings: The value of Indigenous knowledge in the helping professions (2nd ed.). Canadian Scholars’ Press.

10.

Beltrán

(2019). “I (we) refuse to be silenced”: Poetic self-reflexivity as a feminist tool of resistance. Affilia, 34(2), 145–150. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109919845456

11.

Bernard

W. T.

(2020). When two pandemics collide: Racism, COVID-19 and the Association of Black Social Workers emergency response. Canadian Social Work Review, 37(2), 175–183. https://doi.org/10.7202/1075119ar

12.

Bolton

Field

Thompson

(2006). Writing works: A resource handbook for therapeutic writing workshops and activities. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

13.

Bowleg

(2020). We’re not all in this together: On COVID-19, intersectionality, and structural inequality. American Journal of Public Health, 110(7), 917–917. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2020.305766

14.

Bromfield

N. F.

Panichelli

Capous-Desyllas

(2021). At the intersection of COVID-19 and sex work in the United States: A call for social work action. Affilia, 36(2), 140-148. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109920985131.

15.

Brown

(2021). Critical clinical social work and the neoliberal constraints on social justice in mental health. Research on Social Work Practice, 31(6), 644–652. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049731520984531

16.

Charter

M. L.

(2021). Exploring the importance of feminist identity in social work education. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 41(2), 117–134. https://doi.org/10.1080/08841233.2021.1895404

17.

Colpean

Tully

(2019). Not just a joke: Tina Fey, Amy Schumer, and the weak reflexivity of white feminist comedy. Women's Studies in Communication, 42(2), 161–180. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2019.1610924

18.

Connolly

(2018). Reflective practice and the feminist lens: The other side. Adult Learner: The Irish Journal of Adult and Community Education, 23–35. Retrieved from: https://www.aontas.com/knowledge/publications/?t = alf.

19.

Crenshaw

(1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1279. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039

20.

Cross

F. L.

Gonzalez Benson

(2020). The coronavirus pandemic and immigrant communities: A crisis that demands more of the social work profession. Affilia, 36(1), 113–119. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109920960832

21.

Cross

Holyoake

D. D.

(2017). ‘Don’t just travel’: Thinking poetically on the way to professional knowledge. Journal of Research in Nursing, 22(6–7), 535–545. https://doi.org/10.1177/1744987117727329

22.

Czymara

C. S.

Langenkamp

Cano

(2021). Cause for concerns: Gender inequality in experiencing the COVID-19 lockdown in Germany. European Societies, 23(sup1), S68–S81. 10.1080/14616696.2020.1808692

23.

Davis

Gentlewarrior

(2015). White privilege and clinical social work practice: Reflections and recommendations. Journal of Progressive Human Services, 26(3), 191–208. https://doi.org/10.1080/10428232.2015.1063361

24.

D’Cruz

Gillingham

Melendez

(2007). Reflexivity, its meanings and relevance for social work: A critical review of the literature. British Journal of Social Work, 37 (1), 73–90. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcl001

25.

Fook

(1999). Reflexivity as method. Annual Review of Health Social Sciences, 9(1), 11–20. https://doi.org/10.5172/hesr.1999.9.1.11

26.

Fook

(2002). Social work critical theory and practice. Sage.

27.

Fook

(2015). Reflective practice and critical reflection. In Lishman

(Ed.), Handbook for practice learning in social work and social care: Knowledge and theory (3rd ed.) (pp. 440–454). Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

28.

Fook

Gardner

(2007). Practicing critical reflection: A resource handbook. Open University Press.

29.

Furman

Coyne

Negi

N. J.

(2008). An international experience for social work students: Self-reflection through poetry and journal writing exercises. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 28(1–2), 71–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/08841230802178946

30.

Furman

Langer

C. L.

Anderson

D. K.

(2006). The poet/practitioner: A paradigm for the profession. The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 33(3), 29–50. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol33/iss3/3.

31.

Furman

Lietz

Langer

C. L.

(2006). The research poem in international social work: Innovations in qualitative methodology. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 5(3), 24–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690600500305

32.

Gray

Coats

Yellow Bird

(2008). Indigenous social work around the world: Towards culturally relevant education and practice. Ashgate Publishing.

33.

Haraway

(1988). Situated knowledge: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminism Studies, 14(3), 575–599. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066

34.

Harding

(1987). Feminism and methodology: Social science issues. Indiana University Press.

35.

Hart

M. A.

(2002). Seeking Minno-Pimatisiwin: An aboriginal approach to helping. Fernwood.

36.

Hesse-Biber

S. N.

Piatelli

(2012). The feminist practice of holistic reflexivity. In Hesse-Biber

S. N.

(Ed.), Handbook of feminist research: Theory and praxis (pp. 557–582). Sage.

37.

Jeffery

(2005). ‘What good is anti-racist social work if you can’t master it’?: Exploring a paradox in anti-racist social work education. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 8(4), 409–425. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613320500324011

38.

Jeffery

(2007). Managing race in social work education policy. Journal of Education Policy, 22(4), 429–454. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680930701390578

39.

Jeyasingham

(2012). White noise: A critical evaluation of social work education's engagement with whiteness studies. British Journal of Social Work, 42(4), 669–686. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcr110

40.

Jiwani

(2006). Discourses of Denial: Mediations of race, gender, and violence. UBC Press.

41.

Jones

R. G.

(2010). Putting privilege into practice through “intersectional reflexivity”: Ruminations, interventions, and possibilities. Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping, 16(1), 122–125. Retrieved from: https://reflectionsnarrativesofprofessionalhelping.org/index.php/Reflections/article/view/800.

42.

Kennedy-Kish (Bell)

Sinclair

Carniol

Baines

(2017). Case critical: Social services and social justice in Canada (7th ed.). Between the Lines.

43.

Kovach

(2009). Indigenous methodologies: Characteristics, conversations, and contexts. University of Toronto Press.

44.

Laster Pirtle

W. N.

(2020). Racial Capitalism: A fundamental cause of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic inequities in the United States. Health Education & Behavior, 47(4), 504–508. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198120922942

45.

Lee

Bhuyan

(2013). Negotiating within whiteness in cross-cultural clinical encounters. Social Service Review, 87(1), 98–130. https://doi.org/10.1086/669919

46.

Mandell

(2007). Revisiting the use of self: Questioning professional identities. Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc.

47.

Martin-Cuellar

(2018). Self-reflexivity through journaling: An imperative process for the practicing clinician. The William & Mary Educational Review, 5(1), Article 11. Available at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/wmer/vol5/iss1/11.

48.

Mattsson

(2014). Intersectional as a useful tool: Anti-oppressive social work and critical reflection. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, 29(1), 8–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109913510659

49.

Miehls

Moffat

(2000). Constructing social work identity based on the reflexive self. The British Journal of Social Work, 30(3), 339–348. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/30.3.339

50.

Pease

Fook

(1999). Transforming social work practice: Postmodern critical perspectives. Routledge.

51.

Pollack

(2009). “Circuits of exclusion”: Criminalized women's negotiation of community. Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health, 28(1), 83–95. https://doi.org/10.7870/cjcmh-2009-0007

52.

Pollack

Rossiter

(2010). Neoliberalism and the entrepreneurial subject: Implications for feminism and social work. Canadian Social Work Review, 27(2), 155–169. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41669933.

53.

Shields

S. A.

(1987). Women, men, and the dilemma of emotion. In Shaver

Hendrick

(Eds.), Sex and gender (pp. 229–250). Sage Publications.

54.

Sinclair

Hart

Bruyere

(eds.). (2009). Wicihitowin: Aboriginal social work in Canada. Fernwood.

55.

Sinding

Warren

Paton

(2014). Social work and the arts: Images at the intersection. Qualitative Social Work, 13(2), 187–202. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473325012464384

56.

Smith

D. E.

(1987). The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology. University of Toronto Press.

57.

Smith

L. T.

(1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples. Otago University Press.

58.

Stein

(2018). 365 Creative writing prompts. ThinkWritten. Retrieved March 10, 2020, from https://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/.

59.

Todd

(2011). “That power and privilege thing”: Securing whiteness in community work. Journal of Progressive Human Services, 22(2), 117–134. https://doi.org/10.1080/10428232.2011.606528

60.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015). Truth and reconciliation commission of Canada: Calls to action. Winnipeg, Manitoba. Retrieved from: www.trc.ca.

61.

Walsh

C. A.

St-Denis

Eagle Bear

(2018). Decolonizing reflexive practice through photo essay: Aisinai’pi storying place. Cultural and Pedagogical Inquiry, 10(1), 103–118. https://doi.org/10.18733/cpi29402

62.

Wilson

(2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Fernwood Press.

63.

Yee

J. Y.

(2017). Carrying out research on whiteness, white supremacy, and racialization processes in social service agencies. In Parada

Wehbi

(Eds.), Reimagining anti-oppression social work research (pp. 61–70). Canadian Scholars.