CALL FOR PAPERS

BEYOND BINARIES

 A special issue of

Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice

A fully open access independent journal for the systemic practice communities

 

Binaries as power relations

Systemic practitioners are re-thinking binary categories, questioning their status as truths. Binaries create single stories which individualise and separate people from each other, from other lifeforms and the context of their production. Binary “truths” can be reinforced through professional theory and policy. They can maintain imbalances of power based on stories of who really knows or has rights. Discourses of truth, misinformation and “post-truth” create tenuous fault lines across the personal, professional and political.

 

How do binaries play out in your life, in your practice, and what do you do?

We invite systemic practitioners, trainees, and people engaging with services to speak from within your own lived experience.             We welcome writings that show systemic/relational theory and practice in action on the theme of Beyond Binaries. We offer examples of binaries below.

 

The Beyond Binaries Special Issue

 We invite papers, poems, practice and research notes and short stories

• which show us non-binary systemic practice in action
• to move us beyond binaries in our thinking, living and practice
• which show us non-binary living
• which help us build critique which supports us to challenge
• which create new ways of conceptualising ourselves and each other
• to explore ideas around beyond binaries
• to critique the binarisation of life
• to move beyond the “both/and” position
• which draw on intersectionality theory (Crenshaw, 1989)
• which equip us to sustain resistance to polarising tactics

 

 Therapist – Client / Supervisor – Supervisee/ Trainer - Trainee

The creation of a social stratum of professional knowledge embodied in professional people – or now through interactive software – are practices that are creations arising out of some cultures and eras. How has this naming of roles come about? In which contexts or cultures is this a useful distinction and in which not, and when is this distinction limiting or opening of possibilities? How do these terms and roles create safety or unsafety? How do we know when we are colonising or recolonising people?

 

Othering and supremacy

Binaries can create generalisations which result in hostile policies and acts of othering. They can become strategies to divide and conquer. In the human domain, this creates an idea that it is possible for one group of people to know about others and make decisions for them. The discourses of medicine and politics are intertwined to create epistemic confusion. People are not accidents of “co-morbidity” (Moore, 2022) needing to be subjected to compulsory diagnostic and categorising practices (for example Hancock, 2023) and policies (for example, Cass, 2023) depriving them of treatment dictated by neoliberal and right-wing political agendas. Expertise cannot be learned away from communities without entering into unequal relations based on ideas that one party knows best about another – an idea widely critiqued (for example, Anderson and Goolishian, 1989).

 

Human binarisation and intersectionality

But humans are more than “disabled” or “able-bodied”, Black or White, Jewish or Muslim, male or female, British or Not British, trans or cis gendered, old or young, neurodivergent or neurotypical – to draw on just a few examples. Huge numbers of people go missing at the intersections of single-story identities (Crenshaw, 1989). People are members of many overlapping communities, some of whom have more or less visibility or power or recognition. In segregatory social and knowledge practices, heritage and histories are subject to being backgrounded, superficial recognition, revised and censored.

 

Transmaterial binaries

The planet is not made up of humans and others, matter dead and alive, of opposing states of matter. Evidence does not need restricting to things considered “worthy” through western lenses. Materialities and matter that matters may include ways of being, seeing, doing, knowing and understanding that make sense across some contexts, cultures, communities, religions and groups but which will fail the “NICE” guidelines for what counts as “robust” evidence. These lifeforms (human and beyond human) and other matters are ridiculed and erased, and yet there are those fighting to give places and life forms rights so they can be entitled to life, to protection, to contexts which enable them to thrive.

 

Technological relations

When Barad promoted the idea of intraction instead of interaction (Barad, 2007), they showed one-ness in what we create with each other, and therefore as a new being-becoming. Braidotti (2013) and others have used the term technohuman to show how we need to get beyond the delusion that there is an “I” which owns “my” gadget and rather accept that we are now one with our gadgets, that they own us, that we are in relationships with entities we cannot see or know. Artificial Intelligence involves a reflexive and generative shaping process in relationships between humans and technology. This impacts on our behaviours, language, truths, productivity and relational patterning over time. There is no “me” and “it”. That binary is a concept from an earlier era. Furthermore, the binary of physical space and virtual space is becoming blurred by emergent ethical and legal accountability in national and international law.

 

Submissions

Murmurations is a systemic practice journal. You need to show relationality, reveal who you are (in your many selves and how they are present and in play in the writing), ensure you have genuine permission to include the lives of others in your writing or media, and hold in mind the key ethic of “Nothing about us without us!” Please read some of the papers in this journal to understand the focus and ethos of this systemic journal.

- Papers (4000-7000 words). These will be peer reviewed, fully referenced and observe the guidance for contributors to MJTSP: https://murmurations.cloud/ojs/index.php/murmurations/guidelines

1. Papers which address systemic theory and practice in-depth in relation to this topic.
2. Papers which are theoretical, philosophical, arts oriented from outside the systemic field but with relational implications and therefore potential usefulness.

- Poems (in any form)

- Short stories of about 1000 words

- Practice or research notes up to 2000 words

- Photo or video essays

- Audio recordings or videos

 

Timeframe

Submission date 30^th November 2024 (earlier submissions welcome). Publication in Spring 2025.

 

Guest Editors

Francisco.Urbistondo@gmail.com, NafeesaNizami@gmail.com, Amanda.Middleton@pinkpractice.co.uk

If you have an idea about something you’re considering submitting, we’d like to hear from you.

 

Website

murmurations.cloud and check the website for dates of sessions with the guest editors to discuss your ideas for a paper / poem / story etc!