The Possibilities of an Anti-Oppression Mindful Dialogic Pedagogy in the Intergroup Dialogue Classroom: An Autoethnographic Exploration

Abstract

This essay describes my exploration of a mindful dialogic pedagogy after experiencing the harm of engaging in secularized and depoliticized mindfulness practices while coming out as trans and non-binary. I introduce the possibility for an anti-oppression mindfulness practice within Intergroup Dialogue (IGD). Mindfulness has often been decontextualized from its original meanings and used as an extension of white supremacist, ableist, Western, settler-colonial ideology. When used with an anti-oppression framework within dialogic spaces like IGD as a way to dismantle dominant structures and associated injustices, I find non-judgmental, present-moment awareness to be a powerful framework for challenging personal and relational connections to, internalizations of, and impacts by systems of privilege and oppression. This practice must always be situated within the interconnected landscape of systemic injustice.

Keywords:

• Anti-Oppression
• Autoethnography
• Haunting
• Intergroup Dialogue
• Mindfulness Practice

Acknowledgments

This paper would not be possible without the profound support and mentorship of Dr. Gretchen Lopez, Director of Syracuse University’s Intergroup Dialogue Program (IGD), who, along with her unwavering commitment to dialogic pedagogy, helped me synthesize the analysis presented in these pages. Additionally, my mentors from Lesley University’s Mindfulness Studies Program, Dr. Nancy Waring and Dr. Mariana Funes, provided me with the critical mindfulness framework and foundation from which this analysis manifested, and to whom I will be forever grateful. I would also like to thank Dr. Diane Grimes for all of the time that she has taken to get to know me and my work and for her dedication to a fully situated, deeply reflective mindfulness practice.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I borrow the term bodymind from various Mad (from the word Madness and the psychiatric survivor movement (Menzies, Reaume, & LeFrançois, 2013)) and disability justice scholars such as Price (2014) who employ this combined term to represent the interconnectivity of the body and the mind, especially in regard to making meaning of lived, felt experiences. Although Price draws on the work of Rothschild (2000), who coined this term and theory through the lens of trauma survivorship, I explore the concept of the bodymind through Price’s additional framework of mental disability. Price (2014) argues that “our problems are in no sense (all in our minds)” (p. 240) and experiences of disability and impairment are intricately connected to oppressive institutional and sociological systems and discourses (p. 5).

2. LGBTQ2IA+ stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Two Spirit, Intersex, Asexual, and the ever-evolving language for nonbinary identities and expressions.

3. Although a detailed exploration of the practices that I experienced at this mental health facility is beyond the scope of this paper, it is important to share that these practices centered around the principles of cognitive restructuring, self-regulation, and internal self-awareness and reflection. While refraining from endorsing specific psychotherapy treatments or making generalizations about them and their efficacy, I merely seek to express here my observation of how helpful such mindfulness-based practices were for those with whom I shared this space.

4. It is important to note that Gordon’s (2008) work on hauntings is a sociological framework designed to uncover and reckon with the vast interconnected web of social injustice and give name to that which dominant ideological systems seek to invisibilize (p. 7). As a scholar situated at the intersections of multiple disciplines, including Mad Studies and Trans Studies, I find myself particularly drawn to Gordon’s framework. By embracing and encouraging forms of perception that are often pathologized according to ableist, Western settler colonial norms, Gordon makes space for ways of knowing that inherently defy linguistic boundaries. As a user/consumer within the medical industrial complex with psychiatric diagnoses, I find that naming the felt sense of experience and its origins using the terms crafted by dominant power structures is often required for Mad knowledge production to be believed and validated; otherwise, it can be viewed as slipping ever so easily into the world of psychosis and delusion (Gordon, 2008, p. 7). Overall, I value the contributions of Gordon’s frameworks to my own Mad scholarship and the normative and non-normative ways that I engage with knowledge production within larger systems of privilege and oppression.

5. The precepts are ethical and moral guidelines according to which one lives and carries out their life as a Buddhist.

6. For a detailed analysis of the complexities of interweaving IGD and mindful, contemplative practices, please see Speaking out while speaking in: Transforming intergroup dialogs with mindfulness-based anti-racist practices (Cosantino, 2021). In this article, I outline an anti-racist, anti-oppression reimagining and profound problematizing of Kramer’s (2007) Insight Dialogue guidelines (a form of mindful dialogic practice) and lay the groundwork for a fully conceptualized mindfulness-infused IGD curriculum (in preparation).

7. The term predominantly white institution (PWI) “describe[s] institutions of higher learning in which Whites account for 50% or greater of the student enrollment. However, the majority of these institutions may also be understood as historically White institutions in recognition of the binarism and exclusion supported by the United States prior to 1964” (Brown & Dancy, 2010, p. 523).

8. Intragroup dialogs are dialogs among individuals with shared social locations and social identities (Ford, 2012; Ford & Malaney, 2012).