The dialectics of Chat: Privilege, power and institutional racism

Abstract

The online Large Group promoted by the Group Analytic Society International in response to the Covid 19 lockdown, presented participants with the ‘Chat’ facility alongside the standard verbal communication. Chat rapidly became an alternative channel of communication and a forum for commentary, criticism and challenge to the primary spoken discourse of the group and became a home and a vehicle for disaffected and dissident voices, particularly those marginalized according to race, class and gender. Controversy has developed as various objections have been raised against Chat being allowed in GASi online Large Groups. In so far as Chat has become a place for marginalized and subaltern voices to speak and be ‘heard’, then closing it becomes a praxis of silencing and further institutionalizing racism, patriarchy and class oppression.