Racial witnessing and the formation of los conscientes – race critical preservice teachers

This article introduces the concept of racial witnessing – i.e. defining moments where an individual experiences a strong event in which they (or someone they care deeply about) were racialized, Othered, and/or treated differently (usually negatively) because of their racial group, racial affiliation, etc. It is these moments of racial witnessing that are pivotal in the development of los conscientes. These were the more critical-minded preservice teachers who demonstrated a greater understanding regarding race and racism and the impacts it has on the educational system and human lives. This article argues that it is not a specific variable and/or experience (such as those gained in field experiences) that creates race consciousness among preservice teachers. It is the accumulation of racial witnessing events that allow for a deeper understanding of how race dictates lives.     

Indifference and repetition: occupation testimonies and left-wing despair

As despair is increasingly seeping into leftist politics in many parts of the world, its long-held image as a hindrance to political activism still prevents the thriving literature on the politics of feeling from adequately theorizing this collective posture. This article seeks to probe the public manifestations of left-wing despair by looking at the despairing dispositions that have evolved in the Israeli Left in response to its failure to undermine Israel’s regime of occupation, using the coping modes this failure has sparked as a conduit for complicating the negative image of despair in politics. The analysis draws on two documentaries that showcase soldiers’ testimonies – Z32 and Censored Voices – in which the compulsive but fruitless repetition of witnessing is brought to the fore and serves as a platform for the enactment of despair as a distinctively public disposition. In dialogue with Wendy Brown’s notion of left melancholy and Lauren Berlant’s notion of cruel optimism, the article propounds despair – understood not as an affect, a feeling, or an emotion, but as a recursively performed posture – as an alternative analytic grid for grasping the contemporary agonies of the Left. Drawing on the Israeli documentaries, it demonstrates that despair may be propelled and perpetuated by two kinds of crises – a crisis of movement and a crisis of belonging. Taking both modalities as evidence that despair does not necessarily involve a withdrawal into the self and may transpire through public acts of care, the article claims, using Bonnie Honig’s work on public things, that the ground for the assessment of despair should be shifted from its presumed impact on political actors to the tangible imprints it leaves in the public settings in which action takes place.     

‘They were constantly on the losing side of things’: the pedagogical power of an African-American teacher candidate bearing witness in teacher education

The stories of students and teacher candidates of Color (Just as singular racial/ethnic identities are capitalized (i.e. African-American, Asian, Latina, Native American etc.), I capitalize Color to honor the various identities that many ‘non-white’ people hold near and dear. I recognize the nuances in doing so- such as the reality that the term ‘people of Color’ actually erases identity while the term also highlights a shared experience (though also nuanced) of being ‘non-white’ in a white supremacist society.) hold powerful lessons and insights for teacher education programs and educational reform efforts. Yet, rarely do educators and policy-makers solicit or critically engage the educational narratives of these stakeholders. In particular, research confirms that we know little about how students’ of Color educational experiences are impacted by race(ism) and culture and how those experiences subsequently inform their ideas about teaching. This study, framed by critical race theory (CRT), examines an African-American (African-American is used intentionally here as this is how Ariel identifies racially.) teacher candidate’s racialized K-12 and postsecondary school experiences to more fully understand the connection between lived experience and developing teacher identity. Ariel’s story reflects her own school experiences; her focus on her peers’ school experiences when asked about her own; and how those experiences, informed by race and culture, contribute to her development of pedagogy. Analytical considerations illustrate that memory and remembrance, witnessing and bearing witness, and testimony are deliberate and powerful acts in the development of pedagogy and should be central to teacher education curriculum.     

Narratives from the neighbourhood: The discursive construction of integration problems in talkback radio1

This paper examines how speakers deploy narrative devices in talking about Sudanese refugees. Particularly, we show how narrative constructions form an important basis for the advancement of accounts about integration problems into the local polity. We analyse talkback ‘phone‐in’ calls to a local Adelaide radio station that provide callers an opportunity to give accounts of events and social phenomena that concern them in their local settings. Analysis shows that speakers regularly deployed narrative constructions, first‐hand ‘witnessing’ devices that functioned to legitimate accounts as veridical versions of events, and contrast devices to explicate the moral and behavioural aberrance of Sudanese refugees. The analysis illustrates how these discursive devices function rhetorically in interaction, in ways that differentiate Sudanese refugees as problematic. Through this analysis, we contend that narrative devices precipitate and bolster socio‐political policies that have serious, negative consequences for Sudanese refugees.     

Communalization and Homophile Organization Membership:

This paper applies a sociological perspective to homophile organizational membership in the pre- and post-Stonewall gay community, and now, during AIDS. Focus is on comparing early theories of gay community organizational participation with the genesis, nature, and meaning of gay/AIDS volunteerism as a political statement. By emphasizing how the communalization of AIDS empowered gay people, earlier homophobic vocabularies of analysis are replaced with those that recognize gay pride as the source of organizational membership. Today, self-acceptance by gays leads to the willingness to “bear witness” to People with AIDS in voluntary community based initiatives which join the personal and collective interest in a way that confirms a positive homosexual identity. The theory that communalization empowers by undermining homophobia is supported by data taken for a survey of volunteers at Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York.     

Hearts of Steel

This article looks at the way Arab male and female journalists in pan-Arab media negotiate their journalistic ethics with the aim of boosting their professional image while adding credibility to their news. Drawing on several examples of these male and female journalists, I seek to show how women adopt an un-emotional style when reporting news of pain and suffering, while male journalists emotionally engage with this type of news. The analysis draws on extensive interviews with male and female Arab journalists in pan-Arab media which are scattered inside and outside the Arab region. The discussion is informed by the current debate around detachment versus attachment in news reporting as well as the feminist media debate about the distinction between feminine and masculine values in mediating suffering.     

When images matter: Internet child pornography, forms of observation and an ethics of the virtual

The arrest of Pete Townshend, lead guitarist for The Who, for downloading and possessing Internet child pornography and the publicity surrounding the case provides an initial point of discussion concerning the emergence of an ethics of the image that is not predicated on the actual evidential status of that image but on more virtual forms of observation. The discussion in this article focuses on three substantive aspects of this event - legislation in the UK and the US, expert psychological discourse, and public discussion in the UK press - in order to present a particular and situated rendering of forms of virtual observation. The context to this discussion concerns the notion that digital imaging technology presages a need for new legislation, law enforcement and social analytical frameworks for understanding and tackling the production, distribution and consumption of images of child sexual abuse.     

Peach Trees Grow in the Spaces Between People: Counselling Practices in the Territory of Violence

In this paper the authors reflect on how therapeutic practices wove a community of care and concern with a young man in South Africa who was at risk of anger ruling his life. A counselor and outsider witnesses participated in responding to the problems the young man and his family faced. The authors discuss the steps they took in the therapeutic journey and describe how their personal and professional lives were shaped by this collaboration. This work inspires and sustains their enthusiasm in seeking to understand how to best respond when positioned to counsel.     

Data witnessing: attending to injustice with data in Amnesty International’s Decoders project

ABSTRACT

The concept of witnessing has been used to explore the construction of evidence and experience in settings of law, religion, atrocity, media, history and science. Recent research has examined how digital technologies may multiply the involvement of remote, non-present and unanticipated actors in the witnessing of events. This paper examines what digital data practices at Amnesty International’s Decoders initiative can add to the understanding of witnessing. It introduces the notion of ‘data witnessing’ with reference to four projects on (i) witnessing historical abuses with structured data from digitised documents; (ii) witnessing the destruction of villages with satellite imagery and machine learning; (iii) witnessing environmental injustice with company reports and photographs; and (iv) witnessing online abuse through the classification of Twitter data. These projects illustrate the configuration of experimental apparatuses for witnessing injustices with data. In contrast to accounts which emphasise the presence of an individual human witness at the scene, Amnesty’s data practices are conspicuously collective and distributed, rendering the systemic scale of injustices at a distance, across space and time. Such practices may contribute to research on both (new) media witnessing and data politics, suggesting ways in which care, concern and solidarity may be constructed, structured, extended and delimited by means of digital data.