Week 11 - Powerful thoughts (Mar 31 - Apr 7)
If the community really is the curriculum, how do we ensure that we don't put undue emphasis on some aspects of the course at the expense of others because we inadvertently ignore, or silence, some voices?
This week Maha wrote a powerful (pun intended) blog piece The Power of Social Media in which she talks about privilege. She followed this up with a link in the Facebook group to another piece she has written Why doesn’t this feel empowering? The challenges of web-based intercultural dialogue (apologies if this is behind a paywall, please shout out and we'll see what we can do to make it accessible). The passage that spoke to me most was a quote from Lugones used at the end of the article:
"We [the minorities] and you [the dominant] do not talk the same language. When we talk to you we use your language … But since your language and your theories are inadequate in expressing our experiences, we only succeed in communicating our experience of exclusion. We cannot talk to you in our language because you do not understand it."
So - how do we sort this out? How do we ensure that all voices (and indeed all silences) are acknowledged? Can this be done? I feel we owe it to each other to try.
(I looked for an image of shouting and this popped up. I heart puffins.)