[orignally posted on Dr. Sauve's personal blog; reposted here]
Context
Prompted by a critical feminist, qualitative researcher I met in a coffee shop to audit her advanced qualitative methods course, I am now reading for the third (later in writing, fourth and fifth) week of lectures. Right from the start of the class, we discussed research journals, and the importance of noting our thoughts, feelings and reactions to our readings and our research (this type of reflection is part of course assignments). I had never had a research journal and I’m finding it challenging to keep one. My thoughts go in margins, on TikTok, on Twitter, sometimes stay in my head, sometimes go in the journal… it’s messy and I’m finding it hard to get outside of my own head. As we discussed and read about journaling and reflexivity and writing about one’s own experience, I thought it would be worth sharing my journey from a pretty mainstream liberal White feminist doing positivist research to someone with radical politics of acceptance, love, inclusion and community using a critical framework for her research.
Where I was
I used to think myself a pretty progressive person, and maybe in some ways, I was. Before I continue, it’s important to note that these are memories ranging from over 10 years ago to just a few years ago, so it is very possible – almost guaranteed, actually – that things are distorted. I got involved in activism around 15 with CISV, a global not-for-profit in peace education. The first project I organized was a drive for backpacks and stuffed animals to give to local foster care children. I had heard read about this project in a Chicken Soup book (probably for the preteen soul?), thought it was a great idea and wanted to do the same in my area (living in rural Nova Scotia at the time). Baby activist Sarah didn’t once stop to think to ask if this was something that was needed by local foster care kids. I just did it and was pretty darn proud of myself. Definitely saviour complex going on there, doing a ‘helpful’ project to make myself feel good rather than meet a community need. But, I was 15, I didn’t know any better. I can forgive myself. I was involved in CISV for about 10 years, and I don’t need to go through all the experiences I had with them. The gist of it is, at the time, I thought I was surrounded by progressive people – how progressive varied – I went through a bunch of leadership training, I made friends from and visited many places around the world and I took part in local, national and international activism. Overall, the Junior Branch (roughly, 11-25?), was, in my opinion, the most progressive branch of CISV, at all levels. I have now come to see CISV as a rich people organization that does stuff primarily to make themselves feel good (with some exceptions, of course) and it is not, at the core, radical.
Outside of this particular extra-curricular, I was a big believer in science. I was really good at it (in school). I was really good at school in general. I obeyed rules (terrified of punishment and wanting to please authority figures, read into that as you will..), I absorbed new knowledge quickly, remembered it, and tested well. Conventional education worked for me, and it’s just one source of privilege I benefit from. I believed in the scientific method, and if it couldn’t be proven by science, it wasn’t real. In other words, the scientific method was the only valid form of knowledge. So, naturally, I was not in the least spiritual. I thought the idea of a God was naïve and impossible, and any form of spirituality was just a delusion. However, I saw the value in believing in something, given how pervasive it is among humans. So, I had no problem with others practicing their spirituality, as long as they weren’t trying to force me into their belief system too. My entire university experience reinforced the supremacy of science and I was never exposed to any critique of its position as supreme source of knowledge. Science was the universal, supreme and only way of producing knowledge. Nothing else was valid. ‘Anecdotes’ don’t count. If you have an idea, you justify it with literature. You treat studies and writing up as neutral and logical. So many assumptions…
Politically, I think I identified as NDP, though I typically voted Liberal (until the last election cycle) because I voted ‘strategically’, giving my vote to the person most likely to win. When I started voting, the ‘anything but Conservatives’ was very much the idea, so strategic voting made sense. It didn’t cross my mind that police were a violent institution – they existed to keep us safe from bad people. Drugs were bad, unequivocally. What else… I’ve always had a passport and freedom of movement has always been very important to me. I don’t think I liked capitalism, or at least some aspects of it, but I thought it was just the best option we had. I believed in democracy and my responsibility to vote. I wanted a husband and children. My goals were related to great personal success in my career and family life.
Where I am now
I feel so different now. I am so different now. My politics, my identity, my relationship to and understanding of myself. In a nutshell, using all the political descriptors I can think of, I am a feminist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anarchist abolitionist who believes in community and care as a way of living. This as a contrast to the individual competition as currently encouraged under capitalism. In terms of identity, I am a white, middle-class, highly educated, neurotypical, able-bodied, queer, settler, cis-gendered woman. I have always held (most) of these identities (queer is most recent addition!) but only in the last few years have began to comprehend the extend of my privilege. I am still learning and I have no doubt will continue to uncover ways privilege serves me under a heteropatriarchal racial capitalist system. I am also (mostly) vegan – where for me it’s about the industrial scale and harm of animal farming rather than an ethical issue with eating animals – and practice a zero waste lifestyle as much as possible. I do things like bring my own containers to Bulk Barn, shop with minimal packaging (e.g. fruits and veggies always loose, minimal frozen foods), have a bidet, repair clothes and shop second hand, and am generally a minimalist. I want to live in a community (i.e. commune) where I live in a tiny home and spend a lot of time in shared buildings. On this commune we grow, forage, hunt and cook our own food as well as make decisions as a community. We care for one another. We care for the land. We communicate. We promote life. It sounds utopic but I think it’s possible. It sounds like a breeze, but I know it won’t be. There will be challenges and conflicts, but a commitment to a community life means communicating and resolving conflicts together, honoring each individual and the community as a whole.
On the research side, I somehow came across critical approaches to science and MY has my research framework changed, and fast – in the last year, maybe. Again, I was already exposed to a lot of radical politics and identified with those, so a shift in my research framework was probably inevitable. I had never considered that the practice of science came from a particular, narrow point in time and by a particular group of people, namely white men in Western Europe. I had never thought of science as imperialist, or colonizing, or a tool that replicates, generates and sustains systems of power and oppression. I do now! Now, I don’t think science by itself is bad; it’s just that it’s only one way of generating knowledge. There are many, many others. And they are valid. There are things science is really good at (e.g. vaccines!), and there I believe in science. There are things science is really bad at (e.g. understanding spirituality), and there I don’t believe in science. Science assumes a goal of “progress”; in the dominant framework I grew up in, progress = good. But I don’t believe that anymore, because it ignore the cost of that progress. What is really that good about living longer with lots of gadgets if we have to sell our bodies (labour) for 40 hours a week (if you’re lucky) to survive? Progress to me looks like reconnecting with the land and the water; growing my own food; making meaningful, long-lasting connections with many other humans, and non-humans; living with purpose and dignity; living in communities based on care. Doesn’t that sound so much better?
How did my worldview change?
It started in bits and pieces. Learning about global issues of inequality and issues of social justice through CISV – which again isn’t nearly as radical as I am, but it’s certainly on the left end of the political spectrum. Bit by bit, I learned and began to believe that I could make a difference. Then one day (I can’t remember exactly what prompted this decision), I decided to take the free Indigenous Canada course offered by the University of Alberta through Coursera. I knew I didn’t know much, basically nothing, about Indigenous peoples in Canada and wanted to learn. I think around the same time, I joined the Social Justice Cooperative of Newfoundland and Labrador’s book club, and we were reading Caliban and the Witch. Together, those two things were like opening a floodgate of new reading and new information that began the significant shift in worldview. It’s like the dam broke, and once I was comfortable being anti-capitalist (cause Caliban and the Witch got me there pretty darn fast), then it was easy (or easier) to align with abolitionist, radical feminist, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, anarchist politics. Those views quickly started to bleed into my academic life as I realized that my research world was not in line with my politics. I started to question things I had always taken for granted, like the scientific method as the gold standard and valid only form of knowledge creation, like that fundamental research is done for the “benefit of all humanity”, like ethics boards are the gold standard for an ethical study.
One of the most rapid recent changes was going from a single, straight monogamist to being in a queer, polyamorous relationship over the span of about two weeks. It sounded unbelievable when I first realized it and still seems so writing it down. But what’s important is that I was very much primed to make that shift. My social circle has been full of queer and/or polyamorous folks for several years and I was familiar with the concepts. I was more familiar with queerness than polyamory, but several conversations with friends who were in polyamorous relationships, or were in a relationship with someone who practiced relationship anarchy, made it a lot easier to hear my now[ex]-partner Denise describe herself as a solo polyamory/relationship anarchist. The more I learned about it, the more it made sense. I gave up on the idea of “the one” a long time ago and didn’t expect to ever be married, or ever be in a life-long relationship. I didn’t think it was reasonable or possible to expect one person to meet all my needs for my whole life. I just figured I’d be a serial monogamist, because I also figured I’d be too jealous for polyamory. Reading about it, particularly reading about it with Denise and talking it through was extremely helpful to my understanding of polyamory and relationship anarchy and how we wanted to live it for ourselves. Also, given how surrounded by queerness I have been for years, realizing I was attracted to Denise when I first met her in person created a sort of “huh, guess I’m queer now” reaction. I am very grateful to be surrounded by a community that engendered that kind of reaction. I had no fears of judgment at all. When I started sharing that I was queer, no one was surprised and some people were surprised that I wasn’t already out! I think the overarching point is that everything has happened at the right time. If I had met Denise a year earlier, we might not be in a relationship right now. Actually, we almost certainly wouldn’t – we recently talked about if we had met at a time where we were both monogamous, we never would have entered a relationship. She’d been looking for “the one” for most of her life, and I wouldn’t have committed to a life-long relationship. Polyamory and relationship anarchy allow us to be together, while giving us the space to maintain many other relationships in our lives, romantic or otherwise.
If I hadn’t been “primed” by CISV, I wouldn’t have the radical politics I do today. If I hadn’t joined the Coop, I wouldn’t have the radical politics I have today. In my budding spirituality, I believe that everything happened exactly as it was supposed to, and at the right time, to get me to where I am now. And it will take me where I need to go, whether I know where that is or not.
Why did my worldview change?
I could look into the literature to see what’s been written about people changing their minds, or if it exists, more specifically changing worldviews. I know it exists in terms of how some people get radicalized into extreme religion, and what we’re seeing now in anti-vaccine movements. But for the purposes of writing right now, I want to just brainstorm. If I ever get back to this for publication of some sort, I can work literature into my own experience for an auto-ethnography of some sort. So, on that note… why did my worldview change?
Is it because I’m an academic, comfortable with my worldview being challenged? probably not, because I’ve come across many academics who seem pretty entrenched in their worldview. For awhile I thought so though, that I was comfortable being ignorant and learning new things because it was a part of my job. Is it because I identify with those people suffering the oppressions I now fight to dismantle? no, because I’ve almost never experienced those things. I live with a lot of privilege. Is it just a lot of empathy?? I wasn’t raised with these politics, I was raised mainstream liberal, and with the idea that politics were not something that we needed to get involved in – it’s complicated, full of promises and lies, and doesn’t affect us so why should we care? Why was I so prepared to change how I see the world? Am I still prepared to change? Probably, but also probably only in a more radical direction. Maybe that will change as I get older though, there does seem to be a general trend that as people get older, their politics get more conservative. Some get more radical, but that’s a minority. Will that be me? Just keep on getting more radical? First I have to start really living my politics, which is hard. I think it’s possible though, with work, time, and compromise.
As a final thought, I try to think back on how I felt while my entire worldview was challenged and subsequently changed. Part of what makes me wonder how it happened is that it felt like it was pretty easy. I don’t remember pushing back too much. Early on, I definitely defended my centre-left position, as well as science. But when the shift started to happen, it was more of an observation… “huh, my worldview is changing – how interesting”. Actually, if anything, I was angry that I didn’t know all of what I know now earlier. Why didn’t anyone tell me that Indigenous people lived all around us (I grew up in Ottawa and an uncle had a house in Maniwaki, right beside a reserve!!)? Why didn’t anyone tell me that borders aren’t real? Why didn’t anyone tell me that there are many many ways of knowing? I mean, of course, it serves the settler state not to teach us these things, and my parents just didn’t know either. But I was more mad about my ignorance than was mad, or scared, or otherwise about my whole worldview unraveling around me. Maybe part of it is that there was very quickly something to replace that old worldview. There was no void; I rebuilt pretty fast. A part of me definitely wonders, if it was so easy for me, why can it be so hard to convince others? Maybe easy isn’t the right word… it did take me years. It took a lot of build up to get to that tipping point. So, I guess a question we can ask ourselves might be: how do we find and reach anyone’s tipping point?