Relational mentorship for justice-oriented scholarship: space for care, reckoning, and supported discomfort

Article History

Received 8 February 2022
Accepted 10 August 2022

Keywords

Relational mentorship; love; justice scholarship; networks of support; practices of resistance

Mots-clés

mentorat relationnel; amour; bourses d’études pour justice sociale; réseaux de soutien; moyens de résistance

Contact

K. J. Lopez

kjlopez@uwaterloo.ca

Department of Recreation & Leisure Studies, Faculty of Health, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

© 2022 Canadian Association for Leisure Studies / Association canadienne d’études en loisir

Abstract

We see relational mentorship as a move towards shared vulnerability, but also a relationship that is reciprocal, noncompetitive, and non-authoritarian. We reflect on growth spurring (and often uncomfortable) conversations about privilege, race, inaction, among other topics amidst social unrest and personal tensions with/in the systems in which we continue to be complicit. Through returning to cultural protocols, love, thinkacting, theorypracticing, and attentiveness to the affects of our full selves, we discuss the difficult and ‘sacred’ work of support one another’s goals, celebrate milestones, and above all else, prioritize well-being aboveour individual or academic achievements in a neoliberal institution. We focus this paper on: (1) locating relational mentorship amongst existing approaches, (2) articulating relational mentorship and our experiences of it in relation to ongoing socio-political events, and (3) the ways relational mentorship can serve as a critique-in-practice of long-standing academic performances.

Résumé

Nous considérons le mentorat relationnel comme une initiative permettant de découvrir les vulnérabilités partagées, mais aussi comme une relation de réciprocité qui n’est ni compétitive ni autoritaire. En considération du système dont nous continuons de nous faire complices, nous analysons les constructions constructives (et souvent inconfortables) portant sur les privilèges, la race, l’inaction et autres, dans un contexte de révolte sociale et de tensions interpersonnelles. Tout en revisitant les normes culturelles, les thèmes de l’amour, de l’action réfléchie ainsi que de l’application pratique de la théorie, tout en portant attention à l’effet de ses sentiments sur son soi, nous discutons de la tâche difficile, mais « sacrée », qui consiste à s’entraider pour atteindre nos objectifs, à célébrer les événements marquants et par-dessus tout, à valoriser son bien-être personnel avant ses accomplissements individuels ou académiques dans une institution néolibérale. Cet article traite des points suivants: (1) comparer le mentorat relationnel aux autres approches; (2) définir le mentorat relationnel et l’expérience personnelle dans le contexte sociopolitique actuel; (3) explorer les façons de recourir au mentorat relationnel pour faire une critique en contexte des accomplissements académiques généralement reconnus par la société.

Relational mentorship for justice-oriented scholarship: space for care, reckoning, and supported discomfort

K. J. Lopez , J. Leighton , L. A. Berbary and M. M. Pirruccio

Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies, Faculty of Health University of Waterloo

By returning to cultural protocols,¹ love, thinkacting,² theorypracticing,³ and attentiveness to the affects of our full selves we, the authors, discuss the difficult and ‘sacred’⁴ work of supporting one another’s goals, celebrating milestones, and above all else, prioritizing well-being above our individual or academic achievements (Minnett et al., 2019) in the neoliberal academy. In practicing conscientization⁵ and acknowledging Black, Indigenous and of Colour literature (hooks, 2003) that informs this discussion, we focus this paper on: (1) locating relational mentorship amongst existing mentorship approaches, (2) articulating relational mentorship and our experiences of it, and (3) the ways relational mentorship can serve as a critique-in-practice of long-standing academic performances. We fold in reflections to interrogate rugged individualism and the myth of meritocracy (Minnett et al., 2019). In our discussion we share our commitments to this way of relating and any tensions we feel as we our academic training and lived realities become more binded (Collins, 1986); all in effort to bring our whole selves (Parker, 1999/1978) to the academy to make it more real.

The late bell hooks was a mentor to many of us. In remembering her, we honour her commitment to caring as a vehicle to liberation and holding the heavy things lightly so we can mobilize our bodies and minds to facilitate needed change. In this spirit, we write through community and with reverence for the solidarities that bring us together to reconfigure uni-lateral mentorship conventions and, instead, centre caring in our teaching-learning relations, especially during difficult times.

In caring, we move through the hardship of our immediate history, not to erase it, but to acknowledge that we feel it’s almost trite to describe the profound turmoil of last 24 months⁶ and the impact on equity-deserving groups in great nuance without the needed space to write it justice. We write this not to dismiss the pain, trauma (Menakem, 2021), or numbness caused by one or a collection of these lived events and the circumstances that got us there, or to minimize public (re)actions to events that continue to mark our history⁷. Particularly those events that beckon existential anxiety that require panicked virtue signalling, performative allyship, and liberal checklists to address said discomfort. Though, as social scientists, perhaps these happenings have maybe moved us too much, to the point that many have succumb to depletion from so much bad shit happening. The call of the special issue to attend differently – in ways that attempt not to be performative or reproductive – asks us to examine our bodies in relation to the discomfort, reconnect with previously taken for granted relationships, and care for ourselves and communities in ways that are not privileged within neo-liberal institutions that have produced us as workers (Bhattacharya, 2017).

The purpose of this paper is to describe and situate approaches to academic mentorship (Holcomb, 2021) while uncovering how relational mentorship (inspired by hooks, Freire, and Indigenous relations) might create openings for resistance of toxic expectation and performative, neoliberal excellence especially during struggle for social, political, and public health stability. In celebration of our colleagues already doing this work and our own fruitful mentorship experiences, we articulate how engaging relationships in this way creates supportive space to productively navigate personal tensions in justice inquiry in an era of ongoing social awakening. To offer some context to the ideas we present, we fold in our reflections on how deep caring relations formed over the development of Jaylyn’s doctoral dissertation and Mic’s Master’s thesis. These arenas of mutual respect and support move toward mutual and reciprocal exchange of genuine care, vulnerability, respect, and grace constituting what we are describing as relational mentorship. Together, we learned that relational mentorship requires deep reflection through discomfort to ultimately, deepen resistances to identity politics and hold space for collective well-being, and even celebration, during difficult times. This paper shares reflections on difficulty, gratitude, and shifts in perspective born out of collective responses to heavy theorypractices⁸ actively (re)shaping relations while we learned together.

Relational mentorship makes space to share and listen to the tensions we face together in a way is tied to our individual positions in the world. We connect with the work of Minnett et al. (2019) who share that, as supportive colleagues, they “seek to resist this forced compartmentalization and work toward a reality where all parts of our beings are appreciated and welcomed in our personal and professional lives” (p. 211). We understand relational mentorship as a move towards a relationship that is, not only open to shared vulnerability, but also reciprocal, non-competitive, and non-authoritarian (Minnett et al., 2019) and are motivated to reflect on the ways we navigate growth-spurring (and often uncomfortable) conversations about privilege, race, inaction, among other topics amidst social unrest and personal tensions with/in the systems in which we continue to be complicit. This plight for hope might feel futile, but, while exhausted, there remains a will to ride a shifting wave to a place many have theorized about but only few are able to practice authentically and fully because of the limits and expectations of our merit-based academic system. We won’t continue to describe the whole of what this new imaginary is or how it works, but in our hearts we sense that it can only be better than where we are. We are not visionaries. We don’t claim that through our becoming through care as learners, mentors, and comrades that a ‘new’ way of relating can emerge that responds to all the woes of power inequity in teaching spaces. But, we can engage with our need to feel cared for by our communities of learning that led us to seek different ways of manifesting mentoring relationships.

With a responsibility to engage comes the need to create needing grounding points for each other to work through the muck to hope. Part of that means observing how one shows up in conversations on injustice. Through the unpacking our relations and the identity politics that no longer serve us, we sought to lean into simply being and learning together as a means of reciprocal mentorship; to not only learn and grow alongside each other but to simply exist as co-activating humans in justice-seeking labour. Together, we sought to (re)imagine how we were taught to think about mentorship in the academy.

Mentorship in the academy

Mentorship shapes our field’s leading thinkers (Bjursell, 2015; Boluk & Miller, 2021; Colvin & Ashman, 2010; Driscoll et al., 2009; Eddy & Gaston-Gayles, 2008; Kram & Isabella, 1985; Terion & Leonard, 2007; Waddell et al.,2016); future colleagues, friends, and citizens with whom we will work towards a world that is more just. As scholars, we are part of system that perpetuates the need for folx early in their careers to be keenly aware of expectations for ‘success’ in the academy (Patton, 2009; Thomas & Hollenshead, 2001) and the implicit ways we are expected to relate to one another in professional networks and mentor-mentee relationships. There is no doubt that professional boundaries and insights into the functioning of the academy are useful for protecting and preparing early career scholars. However, while we understand professional conduct is meant to create opportunities for growth and healthy boundaries for individuals, we are also aware of the limiting, oppressive, and often harmful effects it can have on individuals who take up space in the academy differently. Communities of support are needed for walking through moments of difficulty, particularly as it relates to how one is showing up for their work and how their work is showing up for the world (especially during a time of tumult). Individuals who are #firstgen or who otherwise do not have ‘standard’ templates for navigating the arguably normative white male, culture of the academy might feel left behind by their engagement with the political and likely, polarizing research topics. Social movements of the last 15 years (i.e., #metoo, #BLM, #stopAAPIhate, truth and reconciliation, LandBack, 2LGBTQ (particularly Trans rights, to name a few) have asked scholars to connect to and carefully articulate one’s subjectivity, positionality, and alliances in relation to their justice-seeking scholarship. In a time when the world continues to be physically distanced during so much social unrest, holding supportive spaces for relational learning and comradery has never been needed more. The literature on mentorship is vast. Conventional definitions of academic mentorship from the 70s and 80s focused on ensuring mentee/ student success towards (Busch, 1985) faster increases in earnings, and more promotions sooner (Roche, 1979) because of greater expectations for productivity within the academic system (Long, 1978). Mentoring meant (and still means) assisting with both career-enhancing functions (e.g., exposure and visibility, protecting, challenging work assignments) and psychosocial functions (e.g., acceptance and confirmation, counselling, role modeling, and friendship; Kram & Isabella, 1985). While efforts continue to be made to resist the banking, or uni-directional approach to learning (Freire, 1970; hooks, 2003), mentorship is often still discussed in ways that describe its usefulness to up-and-coming professionals or an organization through tangible outputs; consumption of learning and data to create new products. For example, Zachary (2005) described benefits of mentorship to include: increased retention and job satisfaction, improved morale, heightened individual and organizational learning, reduced stress, accelerated development, and stronger and more cohesive teams. Many of these conditions and qualities centre the mentee production in the institution over the fostering of a culture of relationship formation for reciprocal growth among a network of mentor(ee)s.

The meritocracy ensures that we make way for labour-over-us; needs of the neoliberal system9 that thrives on individual production rather than on the slow formation of relations built on deep praxis and care. While this articulation creates ‘good’ workers and ‘work culture’ (Bhattacharya, 2017), it fails to inspire critical consciousness of the self in relation to persisting institutional harms and shifting social landscapes. While sometimes uncomfortable, stress, questioning of self in relation to system, and slow development are needed to constructively navigate nuanced terrain that comes with embodying radical and liberatory social theories. Supportive relationships are needed to foster these growth areas through ways of relating that are diverse and able between individuals in learning relationships.

On December 3rd, 2021 Shaw-Mannell honouree, Dr. Lucie Thibault, grounded her award reception talk in the critical role academic mentorship plays in shaping the culture we become a part of and the collegial relations we keep. While we enjoyed Thibault’s talk physically distanced from one another, the essence of her message described the importance of ‘showing up’ for each other, togetherness, and recognizing the power of the collective. She likened academic guidance and support to ‘the village’ (Lesgold, 2016) in describing the collective effort, in and outside of the academy, needed to foster growth, knowledge synthesis, and experience accumulation. She drew on Zachary (2005) to set the basis for understanding mentorship as different from academic leadership; ‘mentoring is defined as a reciprocal and collaborative learning relationship between two or more individuals who share a mutual responsibility and accountability for helping to work towards achievement of clear and mutually defined learning goals’ (p. 3). We agree that Zachary’s (2005) work is here helpful for contextualizing mentorship in relation to substantive learning and also see the potential of this definition to stretch to include mechanisms (like care) for mentorship that fosterness between the body, its political location in relation to the social as part of ‘mutually defined learning goals’ (p. 3). Though, these mechanisms that enable relational mentorship to exist may not be easily had without some intentional space-making.

bell hooks and others have discussed the ways the patriarchy (re)produces oppression and domination through current practices of the academy (Boisvert, 2010; Case et al., 2020; hooks, 2015) that itself functions as a ‘a colonial space, expression’ (Kempf, 2020, p. 385; Kelley, 2016; Wilder, 2013). The fundamental engagements of the academy, like mentorship, teaching, and research attempt to centre an individual as a receiver/producer of knowledge (this frame in itself acting as an apparatus of extraction), which we know are never solo ventures and always occur in relation, supported by many. There is a common coupling that occurs between the term ‘leadership’ and outcome or performance measures, external pressureframeworks, competition, and inequitable workplace relations (Brabazon & Schulz, 2020; Morley, 2013; O’Connor, 2015). This what distinguishes mentorship from the solo-actor, main character energy of ‘leadership.’ While this way of producing may be useful in other academic spaces, a revision of leadership to mentorship is a needed conceptual shift – from a unilateral movement of knowledge towards a practice of teaching-learning that decentre[s] authority, engages theorypractice¹⁰, and is collective and embedded in relational caring (Berbary, 2020, bell; hooks, 2003, 2014; Freire, 2021; Giroux & McLaren, 1993). Boisvert (2010) describes that we should encourage students to be partners in learning by bringing their whole selves into the mentorship relationship, ‘mentees should be taught that they are a source of truth, knowledge and power, and that a strong congruent self is instrumental to change’ (p. 81). To attend to Fox’s (2006) call to rethink practices of the academy in leisure studies and create different scholarship practices, we advocate for relations in ‘the Ivory Tower’ to go beyond substantive learning of a content area to one that involves our fullselves in cooperation, struggle and all.

Feeling the weight of academic expectation, during uncertain times ¹¹, without supportive network, as a person who is affected by the tensions of social justice work is not only difficult for one to navigate by oneself, but ultimately reinscribes power inequities that gatekeep the academy from groups wanting to change it. We all go through the process of questioning our position in the academy, but we seldom consider how questioning our individual power is an apparatus that maintains us in positions of vulnerability – it is on purpose. We long for liberation from the guilt of incongruence: who we see ourselves to be/come, show up for community, do ‘the work’ of equity and the need to sole author, form partnerships quickly, work weekends, adhere to civilities that tamper our rage, and ‘game’ the system. If we are not reforming, or at least resisting, the practices that define our productivity as counted outputs instead of accounting for the energy required to produce in the way that allows for a deepening ofconnections, we are subscribing to more incompatibility and a loss of energy
from needing to reconcile this dissonance . . .

So, in the spirit of interdependence (The Care Collective, 2020) and mutual aid (Spade, 2020), we do it together.

Relational mentorship that is an intersectional, of-colour critique

As a practice of great responsibility, hooks draws attention to the important soul work of teaching as liberation. In the same regard, hooks (2014) cautions us against the tendency for the academy to function as a patriarchal institution often void of the praxis needed to interrogate a persistent and oppressive status quo; one where ‘students are indoctri-nated to support imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy or any ideology’ over open-minded, critical thinking (hooks, 2003, p. 3). Without feminists and folx of colour the academy will remain [cis-White] ‘male- dominated and male-designed’ (Boisvert, 2010, p. 79). To counter-act white supremacist spaces where dominance of these forms persist and fail to make room for Others, feminist mentorship – relations with mentees that are taken up by mentors who have ‘self-awareness and openly acknowledge strengths, limitations, assumptions, biases and stigmas on both personal and professional levels’ (Boisvert, 2010, p. 80) – is needed to subvert the dis-tance-making and depersonalization of ‘academic’ knowledges. We, how-ever, also acknowledge how this way of relating is affected by practices like tenure, which enables individuals of this status to protect space and time for mentoring in different ways. Mentorship as a practice of care is a frame of teaching that is liberatory, upstream, and transformative; a necessary man-oeuvre to begin adoption of intersectional (mentorship) practices inclusive of Black, Indigenous, folx of colour who evoke ‘cultural protocols’ (Bordeaux, 2021, p. 663) of lands, histories, and ancestors to learn in relation.

Fostering these relations asks us to attend to the wholeness of students while collectively having awareness of the entanglements of knowing, as the intellectual spills over into all other areas of worldly engagement. Theorypracticing (Berbary, 2020) relational mentorship looks and feels like the work and full-being commitment of leading pedagogues/thinkers/ healers of our time; Augusto Boal playing-to-know in Games for Actors and Non-Actors (2002); Paulo Freire activating-with-community-to-know in Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Cultural Action for Freedom (1970); Red Nation Indigenizing-action-to-know in The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save our Earth (2021), Gloria Anzaldúa bridging-and-disrupting- borderlands-to-know in This Bridge Called My Back (1981) and Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), Resmaa Menakem remembering-to-know in My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies (2017), and bell hooks engaging-theory-to-teach-knowing in Teaching to Transgress (1994) and Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (2003), just to name a few. To be clear, bringing our full selves to a practice of relational mentorship does not mean being ‘in our feelings’ in way that requires others to unilaterally care for us, it means signalling to others praxis – what our relations mean to us and how events in the world affectively shape ourselves and what and the way we teach (c.f. Lopez & Sené-Harper and Becoming Coalition, respectively, in this special issue).

The call that asks us to show up fully but differently is the same call that creates more ‘heart-heavy¹²’ labour. It’s the constant rear-view-mirrorcheck to see if we could have been kinder, less selfish, less authoritative, more collaborative and less performative, more supportive and more direct, and so on. Relational mentorship can be thought of as the deep responsibility to enact commitments to lift each other up while preserving self in a system that thrives on competition and production. Faculty recognize this, at the interpersonal level, is where the systemic disruption can begin to occur, but it is not without individual tension and struggle.

Relational mentorship, then, is reflected in relationships that are guided by care and accountability, which means mentoring looks different than archetypical academic relationship boundaries that privilege parallel production over ‘being a good relative’ (Bordeaux, 2021, p. 663) so all of ourselves, including those vulnerable parts that inform our lines of social justice inquiry, can be recognized and nurtured. We stand with Minnett et al. (2019) in resisting ‘forced compartmentalization and work toward a reality where all parts of our beings are appreciated and welcomed in our personal and professional lives’ (p. 211). In saying this, we believe relational mentorship means recognizing our supported being is unfragmentable and is wholly in conversation with all parts of the social, which according to Dakota/Lakota relationality (Littletree et al., 2020), is in reference to the ‘intellectual, emotional, and physical world that surrounds us’ (Bordeaux, 2021, p. 663). To practice relational mentorship, we ‘embrace relationality as the goal of interaction’ (Bordeaux, 2021, p. 664) and form networks that are deeply generous, productively critical, but most importantly, restorative.

To be part of a practice that is an intersectional, of-colour critique means to acknowledge systems of power (the ones we ourselves are a part of) as oppressive and resist the reproductive and extractive practices of such systems, particularly towards bodies that are disabled, mad, racialized, gendered, and marginalized in other ways. Kempf (2020) said, ‘everyday individual experiences are embedded in structural and systemic machinations, which have significant implications for identity as well as for individual and group development of sense of self and place’ (p. 383). Language borrowed from Kim (2017), speaking on disablement, references the act of being identifiable as part of ‘precarious populations’ (Puar, 2012, p. 154) serving as a critique-in-action of oppressive state/institutional forces.

Writings about precarious populations (i.e., in disabled/mad, feminist, queer, critical race and ethnic studies) discuss that creating coalitions through difference are necessary for political camaraderie (Kim, 2017) and enacting change described by Kempf (2020). Coalition-building (Bates & Ng, 2021) can be as vast as large networks of co-activators13 or as personal as one relationship between two people, particularly one that focuses relationally to developmental, pedagogical and political curiosities; ‘indeed, the mentor and mentee may use their relationship as a vehicle for change in the academy, despite systemic changes or barriers’ (Boisvert, 2010, p. 81). Regardless of the role donned on us by our affiliated institution, we see all members of our learning community through relational membership as sharing a similar politics and shared set of ethics; poised against oppression. All said, the practice of relational mentorship can exist as a critique-inpractice of long-standing academic performances designed to privilege the same few persons over formed collectives.

‘Freedom’ does not exist in a system that believes itself to be free from ties to other persons’ oppression. As relationally interconnected, oppression affects all of us, albeit in different ways. In this time of collective struggle, we barely had a chance to reel from the last casualty whether human, nonhuman (massive loss of forests, wildlife, climate), or metaphorical (the death of truth in the rise of misinformation and the attack on democracy during the insurrection at the capitol in the US on January 6th, 2021) before the next news beat offered another blow. As the chaos swirled around us, it was difficult to know how we were supposed to process and carry on with ‘business as usual’ when there was so much to which we needed to attend. What we already knew of our systems had begun to bubble up and make itself known to the rest of the world, but there was so much instability and disruption in the world that we could only sit in repose to prevent ourselves
from being swallowed up by all the hurt. Rather than prop up libertarian individualism, some of us had a romantic hope of our academic institutions having our backs and mending the systemic equity from within; creating a different template for relating and building knowledge together. Instead, we did the work on our own. We make space for each other, hosted online meetings for collective processing (e.g., Hallway Chats with Lopez and Lisbeth; formation of Becoming Coalition), read together, shared notes of concern, uplifting texts, cried together, laughed together, and tried to find a new normal in feeling fractured.

The following dissertation work with Jaylyn started with a focus on care and mental health of first responders, however, the socio-political events of the time demanded a timely discussion centred on race, forcing a conversation of racialization past (but not apart from) skin colour and to racist institutions that affect us all.

Learning through the discomfort is normalized through testaments like this one, ‘I have come to recognize many ways that my Whiteness has opened doors that are not always opened to racialized and minority colleagues. There have been uncomfortable moments, mistakes, misunderstandings and a learning process that I hope will continue for the foreseeable future’ (Bates & Ng, 2021, p. 2). There is room to go beyond these sorts of acknowledgements, but it is a start; ‘this interruption to the status quo is not enough, but it matters’ (Kempf, 2020, p. 392).

We are invested in the change that this difficult work might lead to as it asks us to stretch ourselves in different ways, relating across experience and privileges through care and love (hooks, 2000).

Relational mentorship is complex in the neoliberal academy (Lupinaccini, et al., 2018). This paper is not a prescription for how we are ‘supposed’ to extend ourselves one way or another. We do, however, hope it might serve as an invitation/reminder to engage in networks grounded in care as we seek stability during uncertainty. This paper also serves as a gesture of gratitude to our own mentors who helped to shape our practice of relating with one another through learning. To end, we think about how to cultivate relational, interdependent learning relationships through love in the academy to resist extractive relations. To guide us, bell hooks writes, ‘to truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients – care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication’, each of which are humanizing practices that help make this work, our connection to each other, and the acknowledgement of our full selves in a disembodying system, more real.

Notes

1. (Bordeaux, 2021)
2. (Berbary, 2020)
3. (Berbary,March 2020)
4. (hooks, 2014)
5. A critical examination of bodies (and human processes) as not just existing in the world, rather with the world together with others (Freire, 1970). Conscientization is a deliberate and intentional commitment to simultaneously being and becoming critically conscious through acts of reflection and action, towards liberation.
6. January 2022
7. To step back for a moment, many of us have always known for ‘bad shit’ to happen, the difference now is that society at large has begun awakening to the gravity of these systemically formed ills. From folx who live, know, and have worked to change these trajectories for decades or even lifetimes, these awakenings are met with a collective sigh, of ‘common now, really?’, as the mere acknowledgement of it all is a testament to how cries of resistance have fallen on ears that were either under-resourced or unsympathetic. As we write these sentiments from a position of stable health and safety, we are starkly aware that oppression ‘presses down’ differently on Others. Though, from these affects we can comment on the simultaneity of being burned out while buzzing with nervous energy (Holloway, 2002) for something to be different than it always has been in the academy.
8. Theorypracticing resists privileging practice while dismissing theory and becomes an engagement with intra-active entanglements that move toward the idea that “theory and practice should, and truthfully always have, been one and must be values equally and engaged simultaneously to move us toward the most useful action . . . both require the other to become [italics in original] (Berbary, 2021, p. 6).
9. defined as ‘a particular form of reason that configures all aspects of existence in economic terms’ (W. Brown, 2015, p. 17), which has ‘pervasive effects on ways of thought to the point where it has become incorporated into common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world’ (Harvey, 2007, p. 3)
10. namely, the resurgence of BLM leading to organized commitments to take up anti- racism, the instillation of a national Truth and Reconciliation Day in response to Indigenous calls to action, revisions in policy and practice to address poor living conditions in long-term care homes, a continuing public health pandemic, ‘freedom’ movements, among others.
11. Pirruccio, M. M. (2021)
12. Co-activator is a term Berbary (2020) came to while working to determine her own positionality withing various racialized struggles. She recognized that words like co- conspirator or accomplice didn’t speak to her due to the reality that when in the mix of racialized struggles, if implicated, the risk to her well-being would often always be less in the face of racialized police violence because care will always still be inequitably distributed in racist systems. She began thinking of other words that felt more useful for her engagement in struggle–knowing any term she came to needed to be a practice, not an identity, and an especially not an identity that was centred or seen as the primary force. She searched for a term that decentred her position, recognizing that she was amplifying calls for change that came through those experi-encing the struggle on the ground. As someone amplifying, reiterating, furthering momentum, she came to the term co-activator. To activate means to deliver force, to accelerate a reaction – a co-activator sits in the struggle, but rather than centre themselves, decentres their own identities where they are not relevant and instead serves as a conduit, pushing messages, delivering force, accelerating mobilization and organizing, and activating a call from within those communities for which ‘this’ particular identity struggle resides.
13. https://sayevery.name/
14. I received from this text message from Kim in a moment when she may have not even realized how much I needed it; ‘Sorry this is coming at an odd hour; just feeling the need to send a note to ask if you’re doing alright with data collection and all your other responsibilities. This is the time of year we need to be sensitive to burn out, so be mindful and pace yourself’ (Monday 29 November 2021, 9:35pm).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)

ORCID

K. J. Lopez http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8810-4589

J. Leighton http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0835-0526

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