Denaturalisation and Liberation Psychology: Implications for Memory and Political Imagination

Abstract

Although denaturalisation has been formulated in several different ways, for those working in the liberation psychology paradigm, denaturalisation refers to the practice of resisting mainstream psychology's psychologisation—and thus naturalisation—of systemic oppression. In this article, I work from within the liberation psychology paradigm to consider what denaturalisation means for psychologists working with collectives to consolidate anti-capitalist struggles through radical political imagination and collective historical memory. Where denaturalising political imagination pushes us to envision a world outside of the naturalised limits imposed by patriarchal and colonial capital, denaturalising memories foregrounds the processes by which structural oppression has become naturalised. In considering memory and imagination in this manner, I attempt to make clear how denaturalised fragments of liberation can be located across historical, contemporary and future-oriented timescales. Liberation psychology, I argue, draws out how such denaturalisation processes are psycho-political and can assist activists in taking on the agonistic, psychically demanding and intersubjective processes inherent to denaturalisation. I conclude by reflecting on some of the directions that future liberation psychology work might take in making use of denaturalisation to advance emancipatory grassroots politics.