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.

Anti-Racist Research Praxis: Feminist Relational Accountability and Arts-Based Reflexive Memoing for Qualitative Data Collection in Social Work Research

“…I have found that the "aesthetic distance" (Landy, 1994) provided by using arts-based tools allows me to both think and feel simultaneously without becoming numb or stuck, as well as notice patterns across these reflections about what ideas about the world or myself are being challenged. I have also used creative writing as a form of decolonizing intersectional feminist critical reflexivity, finding it powerful for revealing hidden biases and norms in my practice work (Mayor & Pollack, 2022). Given these previous experiences, I felt that using the arts as part of my memoing strategy to unpack my reactions to each interview might offer additional and important insight.…”