Constant civility as corrosion of the soul: surviving through and beyond the politics of politeness

ABSTRACT

Survival for marginalized folks requires communication skills and understanding power dynamics in ways that often result in polite and/or civil discourse. This essay examines how we survive through politeness, the consequences of such politeness, and how politeness is policed through power structures in academia that relate to privilege, merit, tokenism, whiteness, maleness, straightness, and other forms of power.

KEYWORDS:

• survival
• politeness
• civility
• anger
• privilege
• merit

Notes

1 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Dunedin, New Zealand: University of Otago Press, 1999), 107.

2 Sarah De Los Santos Upton, “Communicating Nepantla: An Anzaldúan Theory of Identity,” in This Bridge We Call Communication: Anzaldúan Approaches to Theory, Method, and Praxis, eds. Leandra Hinojosa Hernández and Robert Gutierrez-Perez (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019), 124.

3 Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González, & Angela P. Harris, eds., Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia I & II (Boulder, CO: Utah State University Press, 2012, 2020).

4 Carlos A. Tarin, Leandra H. Hernández, Sarah D. Upton, and Stacey K. Sowards, “Across Bridges and Islands: Borderlands Perspectives on Merit, Whiteness, and Privilege,” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 8, no. 4 (2019): 69–75.

5 “Kadang kita harus mundul sedikit agar bisa melompat lebih jauh,” Ayat-Ayat Cinta 2, directed by Guntur Soehardjianto (Indonesia: MD Pictures, 2017).

6 Harriet B. Braiker, The Disease to Please: Curing the People-Pleasing Syndrome (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001).

7 Nicole Dennis-Benn, Patsy (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2019), 103.

8 Dennis-Benn, Patsy, 245.

9 Sarah J. Tracy, “A Short Soliloquy on Merit,” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 8, no. 4 (2019): 48.

10 Lucy J. Miller, “Meritocracy and the Maintenance of Order,” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 8, no. 4 (2019): 79.

11 Nina M. Lozano-Reich and Dana L. Cloud, “The Uncivil Tongue: Invitational Rhetoric and the Problem of Inequality,” Western Journal of Communication 73, no. 2 (2009): 224.

12 Sarah Amira de la Garza, “Nine Meditations on Difference and Repetition: Reflections Inspired by Questions of Merit and Distinction,” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 8, no. 4 (2019): 11.

13 Sara Ahmed, On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 110.

14 Ahmed, On Being Included, 157.

15 Cristela Alonso, Music to My Years: A Mixtape Memoir of Growing Up and Standing Up (New York: Atria Books, 2019), 229.

16 Catherine Walsh, “On the Decolonial Hows: Interrogating and Making (Our) Praxis” (lecture, The Imagined Borders, Epistemic Freedoms: The Challenge of Social Imaginaries in Media, Art, Religion, and Decoloniality Conference, Boulder, CO, January 7–11, 2020).

17 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 1984).

18 Gloria Anzaldúa, “Haciendo Caras, Una Entrada: An Introduction,” in Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color, ed. AnaLouise Keating (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1990), xv–xxviii.

19 Lindsey Schneider, “The Decolonial Everyday: Reflections on Indigenous Education and Land-Centered Praxis” (plenary panel, The Imagined Borders, Epistemic Freedoms: The Challenge of Social Imaginaries in Media, Art, Religion, and Decoloniality Conference, Boulder, CO, January 7–11, 2020).

20 Joshua Whitehead, “Introduction,” Love After the End: Two-Spirit Utopias and Dystopias (Winnipeg, MB: Bedside Press, 2020), 5.