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

Abstract

AbstractTo 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.