Exposing Exceptionalisms: B(e)aring Complicities and Framing Resistances

Authors

  • Marie Lovrod University of Saskatchewan
  • Corinne Mason Brandon University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15402/esj.v8i2.70811

Keywords:

exceptionalisms, neoliberalism, power differentials, feminist praxis, equity diversity inclusion decolonization (EDID)

Abstract

Exceptionalisms are reductive, short-sighted, and often convoluted rationalizations for refusing relational accountabilities. They systematically deliver narrowly conceived benefits to some at great expense to others who are habitually held from public view and voice. In neoliberal times, excuses for ignoring damage and justifying harms are legion. Our planet is choking on the standard business practice of externalizing costs while permitting pollution, social ills, and health consequences to pile up in the lives of marginalized peoples, species, and places, with complicit  nation states increasingly ill-equipped to address the fallout. Some exceptionalisms, like the “doctrine of discovery,” are perpetrated for centuries with virtual impunity, masquerading as sacred edict until the mass graves of children surfacing from residential school grounds reveal assimilative evils that are more difficult to ignore for those who have benefitted most.

Author Biographies

Marie Lovrod, University of Saskatchewan

(She/They) is Associate Professor and Program Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Born and now working on Treaty 6 Territory, a traditional gathering place for the Cree, Blackfoot, Métis, Nakota Sioux, Iroquois, Dene, Ojibway, Saulteaus/Anisnaabe, and Inuit peoples whose histories, languages and cultures continue to inform the futures of all Treaty people, she remains committed to decolonization. Her research engages the intergenerational, cultural, social and interspecies effects of economic and structural violence in local, national and transnational contexts. She has served as president of two national scholarly associations, Women’s and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes and the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, as well as the editorial board of Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture and Social Justice. Invested in creative approaches to complex issues, nurtured in processes of respectful, co-constructive meaning-making, she values humility in collaborative co-learning projects. She works from the principle that everyone and everything matters.

Corinne Mason, Brandon University

is a queer non-binary femme (They/She) and Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Mount Royal University. Their research program investigates how social justice concerns become ‘crises’ to be managed by institutions. They specialize in the areas of sexualized and gendered violence, 2SLGBTQIA+ in/exclusion, EDI, and reproductive justice. She is the author of Reproduction in Crisis: White Feminism and the Queer Politics of End Times (WLU Press, under contract), Manufacturing Urgency: Violence Against Women and the Development Industry (University of Regina Press, 2017), the editor of Routledge Handbook of Queer Development Studies (Routledge, 2018), the co-editor of Unmasking Academia: Institutional Inequities Laid Bare During COVID-19 (University of Alberta Press, expressed interest), and sits on the editorial board for Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice. Corinne lives as an uninvited guest on Treaty 7 territory, the hereditary homelands of the Niitsitapi (the Blackfoot Confederacy: Siksika, Piikani, Kainai), the Îyârhe Nakoda, and Tsuut’ina Nations, and of the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region III. Email: cmason@mtroyal.ca

References

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Engaging Feminisms: Challenging Exceptionalism Imaginaries

Downloads

Published

2022-11-26

How to Cite

Lovrod, M., & Mason, C. (2022). Exposing Exceptionalisms: B(e)aring Complicities and Framing Resistances . Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning, 8(2), i-vii. https://doi.org/10.15402/esj.v8i2.70811

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 2 (2022): Challenging Exceptionalist Imaginaries through Feminist Community Engagements

Section

From the Guest Editors

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