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Deanne M Bell
  • London, England
Abstract The neoliberal academy is, at its core, an apparatus through which coloniality sustains itself. Despite the academy’s self-promotion as a catalyzing institution that prepares students to become agents of social change and... more
Abstract The neoliberal academy is, at its core, an
apparatus through which coloniality sustains itself.
Despite the academy’s self-promotion as a catalyzing
institution that prepares students to become agents of
social change and transformation, some students and
faculty experience it as a crucible of oppression. In this
essay I trace the beginnings of a project I was a part of in
which I worked alongside students who demanded that a
psychology program in the university be transformed into
a force for decoloniality. I reflect on some of the
conditions of coloniality that students actively resisted at
one college and that exist elsewhere within the university.
Juxtaposed against manifestations of coloniality in the
university are synopses of student’s experience of them.
These synopses provide insight into why students have
chosen to resist coloniality in the academy. I also outline
a pedagogical response to coloniality that I created given
students’ desire for decoloniality. Finally, and with the
permission of student artists, two liberation psychology
student art projects are included to make visible the rise
in subjectivity that becomes possible when a decolonial
atmosphere is created within the university.

Keywords Coloniality  Decoloniality  Teaching 
Decolonial atmospheres  Subjectivity
Research Interests:
This paper will discuss what is meant by social justice in relation to counselling psychology specifically and psychology generally within the UK, as well as briefly considering social justice in the wider context. It will discuss if... more
This paper will discuss what is meant by social justice in relation to counselling psychology specifically and psychology generally within the UK, as well as briefly considering social justice in the wider context. It will discuss if there is a role for counselling psychologists and psychology in promoting social justice through challenging social inequalities and promoting anti-discriminatory practice. It will review the role of counselling psychology in potentially foregrounding inclusive practice which celebrates diversity and provides leadership on this issue. It will then discuss the possible skills and theories psychologists have at their disposal to undertake work which promotes social justice and equality and takes into consideration human rights. It will provide a range of examples of where psychologists have undertaken social justice work using their training and skills and provided leadership in a range of contexts outside the consulting room. The paper will argue that taking an active leadership role to encourage the promotion of social justice is at the centre of our work as a profession, a division and as individual counselling psychologists. Counselling psychology has traditionally put individual therapeutic work at the centre of training and whilst this work is important, this paper will argue that there are numerous other roles and tasks which psychologists could usefully be involved with. These would help ensure that the requirements of service users/experts by experience (EBE) are met and that the context of their lives are foregrounded at the micro (individual) as well as the macro (contextual) level. This may require counselling psychologists to take a wider holistic or systemic perspective and understanding, advocating or intervening in relation to the structural and contextual issues which may give rise to psychological distress, and thereby promote social justice.
Research Interests:
The following is a portrait of indifference, a psychosocial analysis of middle class bystanding of social suffering. It arises as a way to tell a research story of colonially produced racism, classism and denial. Together, these ways of... more
The following is a portrait of indifference, a psychosocial analysis of middle class bystanding of social suffering. It arises as a way to tell a research story of colonially produced racism, classism and denial. Together, these ways of being produce a mode of perception that denies reality, an active erasure that makes the indifferent apathetic. It is based on research in (post)colonial Jamaica yet some of its features can be recognized elsewhere, where bystanders bury their witness, their insight, concealing their understanding of other’s pain. Because this portrait is based on what male and female research participants said, ‘he/she’ are used interchangeably throughout the portrait.
Research Interests:
In this article, five Black researchers bring their insights into conversation about meanings of blackness in contemporary Australia, Jamaica, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. We critically interrogate... more
In this article, five Black researchers bring their insights into conversation about meanings of blackness in contemporary Australia, Jamaica, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. We critically interrogate blackness transnationally and also within the historical contexts of our work and lived experiences. Situated within critical race studies, we draw on multiple theoretical frameworks that seek to preserve the complexity of blackness, its meanings and implications. We examine what it means to be made Black by history and context and explore the im/possibilities of transcending such subjectification. In so doing, we engage blackness and its relationality to whiteness; the historical, temporal, and spatial dimensions of what it means to be Black; the embodied, affective and psychical components of Black subjectivity; and the continued marketisation of blackness today. The article concludes by reflecting on the emancipatory promise of continued engagement with Black subjectivity, but with critical reflexivity, so as to avoid the pitfalls of engaging blackness as a static and essentialised mode of subjectivity. Producing new knowledge about blackness and its effects The effects of racialisation on the subjectivity of Africans and the African diaspora have been inadequately examined in psychology's literature.
In this article, five Black researchers bring their insights into conversation about meanings of blackness in contemporary Australia, Jamaica, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. We critically interrogate... more
In this article, five Black researchers bring their insights into conversation about meanings of
blackness in contemporary Australia, Jamaica, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United
States of America. We critically interrogate blackness transnationally and also within the historical
contexts of our work and lived experiences. Situated within critical race studies, we draw on
multiple theoretical frameworks that seek to preserve the complexity of blackness, its meanings
and implications. We examine what it means to be made Black by history and context and explore
the im/possibilities of transcending such subjectification. In so doing, we engage blackness and its
relationality to whiteness; the historical, temporal, and spatial dimensions of what it means to be
Black; the embodied, affective and psychical components of Black subjectivity; and the continued
marketisation of blackness today. The article concludes by reflecting on the emancipatory promise
of continued engagement with Black subjectivity, but with critical reflexivity, so as to avoid the
pitfalls of engaging blackness as a static and essentialised mode of subjectivity.
Research Interests:
Physical and psychological assaults on group life wound not only community wellbeing but also individual subject formation, altering the way people think, feel, and act. In this paper, reference is made to an emblematic human rights... more
Physical and psychological assaults on group life wound not only community wellbeing but also individual subject formation, altering the way people think, feel, and act. In this paper, reference is made to an emblematic human rights violation in (post)colonial Jamaica in which at least 76 civilians were killed by the state. In an oral history project, 26 inner city community residents who survived state violence and endured collective trauma memorialize loved ones lost but they do not break historical silences about the meaning of the event. In order to retrieve psychosocial signs of structural violence I use diacritical hermeneutics as an analytic tool and interpretive method to describe possible meanings of oral history participants' speech and silences. This approach is proposed as a method through which community psychologists may, along with participants, mobilize unarticulated experiences and latent meanings of social suffering. Knowledge generated by such interpretive methodologies may support diagnoses of social suffering leading to the development of praxes that promote healing and, ultimately, the restoration of community wellbeing.
Research Interests:
In this essay I critically examine the idea of race in light of the killing of Trayvon Martin, an African-American unarmed teenager, in Florida in February 2012. I utilize ideas from liberation psychology, including psychic colonization,... more
In this essay I critically examine the idea of race in light of the killing of Trayvon Martin, an African-American unarmed teenager, in Florida in February 2012. I utilize ideas from liberation psychology, including psychic colonization, and depth psychology, including cultural complex, to explore the racialized black as a colonized, traumatized other. I also use my autoethnographic experience (as a Jamaican who now lives in the United States) to discuss how identities built on race are a source of suffering both when we make others black and when we are made black. Bearing black robs us of the possibility of our humanity. Throughout, I ask several questions about sustaining race as a sociological idea if we truly intend to dismantle racism. I invite us to reconsider race in light of an instance where Rastafarians, a small group of Afro-Jamaicans who express profound race consciousness, determine their own image, not only as black, and as a form of resisting white supremacy.
Research Interests:
Critical participatory action research is a form of community engagement and knowledge generation which, when represented semiotically, may promote social transformation. In this paper, I describe a critical participatory action... more
Critical participatory action research is a form of community engagement and
knowledge generation which, when represented semiotically, may promote social
transformation. In this paper, I describe a critical participatory action research
project I undertook as a liberation psychologist and researcher in (post)colonial
Jamaica. I summarise a narrative psychological portrait of downpressing
produced by analysing participant’s relationship to state violence using a voicecentred
method of analysis. Denied racism and classism are found to dominate
the way in which downpressors relate to others they inferiorise. I discuss the
raison d’eˆtre for animating the psychology of the downpressor in a performance
piece, a reggae opera. Such a piece of community art could be a pedagogical
tool for psychic emancipation. Finally, I describe challenges and potentials
encountered in an effort to forge an aesthetic synthesis among multiple pieces of
conscious art.
Keywords: critical participatory action research; social transformation;
downpressing; reggae opera; community art
Research Interests:
This paper draws on interviews with residents of Tivoli Gardens, an inner city community in Kingston, Jamaica in which 74 people were killed by the state in May 2010. Three researchers are collaborating to witness survivors’ stories of... more
This paper draws on interviews with residents of Tivoli Gardens, an inner city community in Kingston, Jamaica in which 74 people were killed by the state in May 2010. Three researchers are collaborating to witness survivors’ stories of trauma in order to create a public art installation to memorialize loved ones lost and break historical silences thereby catalyzing conscientization. Taylor’s (Disappearing acts: spectacles of gender and nationalism in Argentina’s dirty war. Duke University, Durham, 1997) concept of percepticide – as the annihilation of the perception and understanding of atrocities – is proposed to account for ways in which interviewees simultaneously know but do not acknowledge the meaning of the violence. Freire’s (1987) idea of liberatory education – as a praxis that critically challenges psychic colonization (Oliver, The colonization of psychic space. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 2004) – is extended to research practices with emancipatory aims. Furthermore, this work explores the psychological conditions under which people living in death saturated environments begin to perceive the social structures that permit mass murder. It proposes a form of inquiry that transgresses social science research norms by empowering research participants to critically analyze the world in which they live.
In May, 2010, the government of Jamaica occupied Tivoli Gardens, an inner city community and home of a known drug lord wanted on drug and arms trafficking charges in the USA. Within four days at least 76 civilians had been killed by the... more
In May, 2010, the government of Jamaica occupied Tivoli Gardens, an inner city community and home of a known drug lord wanted on drug and arms trafficking charges in the USA. Within four days at least 76 civilians had been killed by the state. Three researchers (an anthropologist, a cultural worker, and a critical community psychologist) began an oral history project aimed at producing an historical record of survivors of the atrocity; providing an opportunity for families to honor their dead with dignity potentially contributing to personal, community and national healing; documenting testimonies of community members; and creating an oral memorial for the dead. To date, 26 community members have been interviewed. Their audiovisual recordings form an archive from which a multimedia art installation (Tivoli Stories) and a filmic representation (Four Days in May) are being created to share the community’s stories with a public beyond the academy, one that includes the international human rights community. This strategy is meant to break historical silences about atrocities inflicted against marginalized citizens by the state, thereby reconstructing social memory. Despite this project’s liberatory aims, several limitations arise. In this chapter, I critically reflect on community psychology theory and praxes. I argue that mainstream community psychology’s gaze has turned toward sociogeny at the expense of community psyche and that this reduces it to a project confined to the intersection of the social and the cognitive behavioral of group life. Furthermore, conscientization is seen as an attempt to mobilize and disseminate the effects of oppression that lie on the surface of participants’ knowledge. By turning toward multiple modes of consciousness that include unconscious and semiconscious thought and affect, what is known but not acknowledged may come into fuller view. Working out and working from what has been concealed by utilizing participatory research, oral history and psychosocial analyses of voice may produce modes of consciousness that meaningfully contribute to efforts to transform the social world—critical community psychology’s raison d’être.