Colonising Attitudes: the appropriation of concepts

An audio version of this blog post is available here.

Credit: https://unsplash.com/@diesektion 

[Image description; photograph of stacked books that look old and some of them are damaged. The books are of many different colours but there is a general progression from green and blue on the right side to red and pink books on the left.]

By Lucia Sarmiento Verano

Published on 7th July 2021

In a previous article, I discussed how the mainstream discourse in humanistic practice is one that downplays the specificities of cross-cultural and cross-racial work in very insidious ways. Good and important bodies of work on this topic are available out there, but this somehow never made it to many training courses. In my experience, the discourse we have been presented with by tutors and fellow therapists was one of unseeing humanism. One that avoids talks of power and structural inequalities and hierarchies, and one that minimises our own capacity to do harm from whatever privileged position we hold if only we are able to stay ‘open minded’ and engage in a Dialogical Relationship using the I-Thou concept.

Here, within the Radical Therapist Network we know this is only a way to avoid the reality of power and oppression. I’d like to continue this reflection by discussing another aspect of humanistic discourse, in theory and training, that I find deeply problematic.

An example of appropriation

I recently discovered an article by Lynne Jacobs, titled ‘Dialogue and Double Consciousness: Lessons in Power and Humility’, published in 2016 by Gestalt Press. The article was sent as part of our required readings for our course on Privilege Power and Diversity. 

Let me start by saying that I greatly appreciate the opportunity to read this for my course. It is one of the only instances where I’ve seen issues of power and oppression openly discussed, in a way that does not try to downplay the enormity and the violence of white supremacy. This article will make white people uncomfortable and that is necessary. However, upon reading it for the first time I became aware of something that did not sit well with me. The abstract of the article reads “Developing a double-consciousness as a therapist changes the nature of gestalt therapy dialogue subtly. […] This article focuses on encouraging white therapists to practice living with double-consciousness.” 

Now let me explain why I believe these words to be problematic. 

First of all, the concept of Double-Consciousness was first coined by W.E.B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk. It explored the African-American experience, that is, of being marginalised as a black person in a white supremacist society. Growing up in a society that only mirrors white experiences, where the discourse only conveys one particular perspective, while being aggressively discriminated against is the cause for developing said Double Consciousness. 

It is the need to adapt and survive in a society that negates one’s existence at best, and is murderous towards one’s group at worst, that gives the ability to marginalised folks to see the world and themselves not only from their own perspective, but from the dominant group’s perspective. Chances of survival are increased, and chances to access opportunities and knowledge as well. Following Du Bois’ logic, Double consciousness is developed across racial and colonial divides, and only from the perspective of the marginalised side. 

Going back to Jacobs’ article, why are powerful white people like Jacobs using such concepts and applying them to white therapists’ experiences? Her intentions may be good. She is trying to explain how we can develop humility in order to work with black clients without avoiding talking about the broader context. Humility and awareness are not, however, synonymous with Double Consciousness. It is troubling to see how this important concept is being used as if white therapists can achieve it by exercising ‘humility’. Further down her article she states: “What I need to do as a white therapist, is to live with the double-consciousness that Du Bois had foisted on him.” She explains in a list of 6 items, how she, and other white therapists can achieve this. Many positive and necessary points are made in that list. I still do not believe there can be a way for a white therapist to achieve or “practice”, as she says, Double Consciousness. 

Indeed, having a Double Consciousness is not “to be more conscious” as she states at the end of her article, but to instinctively see oneself through the eyes of the dominant other, as Du Bois meant.  It is a “sense of always looking at oneself through eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” (Du Bois, p.3) As we can see from this quote, the aspects of discrimination and oppression, “contempt and pity”, is an intrinsic part of the concept, Jacobs has decided to remove them and adapt the concept to her own experience of a ‘white-but-aware’ person.

Appropriation as a way of domination

Du Bois’ concept was created to conceptualise and describe the experiences of marginalised folks, specifically African-American, and it’s usage out of context misses the original point. Reading that felt much like witnessing a form of cultural appropriation. 

Cultural appropriation can be described as the “copying of cultural elements from a minority culture by members of a dominant culture, [and said elements] used outside of their original context. Those who see this appropriation as exploitative state that the original meaning of these cultural elements is lost or distorted when they are removed from their originating cultural contexts, and that such displays are disrespectful or even a form of desecration.” (Wikipedia) 

Like so, Du Bois’ concept was taken out of context by someone from the dominant group, for the learning, growth and professional gain of therapists from said dominant group (white), in a move that could be described as exploitative, because it does not acknowledge the full significance of his theory, nor does it seem to honour the specificity of the African-American experience. It is being used in the service of the work of the same people whose oppressive attitudes generated the conditions for that concept to be born in the first place. This is what seems deeply wrong to me.

I believe that a distortion of the concepts that apply to oppressed people’s experiences reproduces oppression, even if it’s done in a seemingly liberal and anti-oppressive discourse. In fact, it is oppressive in its liberality, by effectively appropriating said concepts. Appropriation like this is essentially colonial behaviour.

We can even go further and attempt to think about this in a systemic way, instead of focusing on the individual actions of a white author. I would argue that strategies like these, even when done out of awareness, are used by the centre, the dominant group, to continue to dominate by epistemic appropriation. 

This is how marginalised experiences get minimised and lose their ability to potently convey their reality, because terms and theories have been co-opted for something else, often something milder, now associated with experiences from the dominant group. I believe that preserving a mental and epistemic space is important. And as part of a privileged group is it important to respect that space.

Epistemic appropriation could be seen as a continuum of practices and behaviours, from the co-opting or distortion of a specific concept like Jacobs does, to complete Epistemic Extractivism by which scholars and thinkers from a dominant group use ideas produced by scholars from marginalised communities without referencing them, often presenting these ideas as their own. An example of this would be Di Angelo’s White Fragility concept.

To read more on Epistemic Extractivism read the 2012 interview of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson here, or read the work by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Ch’ixinakak utxiw, on practices and discourses of decolonization.

Concluding thoughts

Reading and reflecting on this was especially disturbing to me because this example comes from someone committed to anti-racism, who has become a referent for it in the Gestalt community. Someone that also made some excellent and essential points in the same article. This shows how insidious the practice of appropriation is.

Yes, it could be said that, given the important message of Jacobs’ article, I am nitpicking. I do nitpick. If we don’t, how else are we to uncover all the very subtle ways we reproduce and perpetuate structures of domination?

Let me finish by speaking (writing?) openly. I have come to understand something about the European/white mind  from my personal experience: it will hardly accept that there are simply many things out of its limits. Things that do not and will never belong to it, things that it will never be able to grasp. A truly anti-oppressive stance requires acceptance of our limits. It is also an existential stance. The limitations of our perception, empathy and capabilities. Retrieving our place as subjects in this world, not masters. That is true cultural humility.

So, I call for all therapists and theorists that belong to a dominant group, either white, European, cis-het, able-bodied, etc. to critically reflect on the way theories and concepts are being used, especially regarding marginalised folks’ experiences. To stay aware of their context, their original purpose, and compare them to their usage out of such context. We must be mindful of our own epistemic limitations, and discern when to leave a concept, instead of trying to use it and adapt it to our own perspective and framework. We can always find our own ways of expressing ideas, without appropriating something that is of importance to someone else.

References

• Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (2020) Ch’ixinakak utxiw, on practices and discourses of decolonization. Cambridge: Polity Press.

• Naomi Klein (2013) Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson [accessed online 01/02/2021: https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2013/03/06/dancing-the-world-into-being-a-conversation-with-idle-no-more-leanne-simpson/]

• W.E.B. Du Bois (1903) The souls of black folk. New York: Signet Classic.

• Lynne Jacobs (2016) Dialogue and Double Consciousness: Lessons in Power and Humility. Gestalt Review. 20(2) pp. 147-161 

• Wikipedia (2021) ‘Cultural Appropriation’. [accessed online 29/05/2021:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_appropriation]

About Lucia

Lucia is a humanistic therapist working in Oxfordshire and Online. She is interested in multilingual, intercultural therapy, the experiences of growing up between different cultures and how they may affect our sense of self. She wishes to apply a decolonial thought to therapy and hopes that more experiences and perspectives will be considered in theory and training. 

Contact

Blog: www.southoftherapy.com

Website: www.luciasarmientoverano.com

Social Media: @sarmientoverano