Tuka Al-Sahlani

I don’t know where to begin, because there is so much to think about. I envy people who create mind maps…I feel these readings require some idea/map mapping. And this notion of mind-mapping is lingering because when I read Empathy is an Ideology I was excited to read about this difficult concept that we have been taught we must practice from classic literary characters like Atticus to social media reels and all i could think about as an alternative was Standpoint Theory. Then I read Connection Established  and I thought, yes, here is standpoint theory in practice, but I was a little taken aback because even with the gender neutral pronouns, I knew the character who brought their son to the office was a woman.( I couldn’t read beyond that because it was much.) Then I read Design Justice, and appreciated the detailed expression of their standpoint. I knew exactly what they had gone through, not through empathy, but by being in a similar standpoint. From there I  went down a rabbit hole and  searched some of the artists mentioned and found this remarkable artist Zahra Agjee at https://www.andalsotoo.net/people/zahra-agjee/. She used design justice network principles in her project (mus)interpreted.  You can read about it here:  https://theconversation.com/art-show-takes-on-the-misrepresentation-of-muslims-9723.Lastly, i read chapter one of Caring to Know and happy to find the thread of standpoint theory was challenged again with the concept of “relational humility”. My mind wandered back to Connection Established and the introduction to Design Justice. Are empathy, standpoint, and relational humility similar to operating at the “speed of trust”? If we need the speed of trust to produce knowledge as mentioned last week, wouldn’t care be a form of doing things with trust? 

I have a lot more on my mind. I look forward to our discussion soon. But, if I didn’t care enough about knowing about care, I wouldn’t have gone on these tangents. Also, how is caring to know different/similar to bell hook’s pedagogy of hope?

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.