Threading a decolonial feminist response to COVID-19: One community psychologist's reflection on the assemblages of violence

Abstract

To challenge and interrogate the assemblages of violence produced by racial capitalism, and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, community psychologists must engage in a transdisciplinary critical ethically reflexive practice. In this reflexive essay, or first-person account, I offer a decolonial feminist response to COVID-19 that draws strength from the writings of three women of Color decolonial and postcolonial feminist thinkers: Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Sylvia Wynter, and Arundhati Roy. Through their writings I share my reflections on the sociopolitical moment associated with COVID-19. Of importance, I argue in support of engaging a decolonial feminist standpoint to understand the inequitable and dehumanizing conditions under COVID-19, and the possibilities for transformative justice. I offer this reflexive essay with the intention of summoning community psychology and community psychologists to look toward transdisciplinarity, such as that which characterizes a decolonial standpoint and feminist epistemologies. Writings oriented toward imagination, relationality, and borderland ways of thinking that are outside, in-between or within, the self and the collective “we” can offer valuable guidance. The invitation toward a transdisciplinary critical ethically reflexive practice calls us to bear witness to movements for social justice; to leverage our personal, professional and institutional resources to support communities in struggle. A decolonial feminist standpoint guided by the words of Anzaldúa, Wynter, and Roy can cultivate liberatory conditions that can materialize as racial freedom, community wellbeing, and societal thriving.