From Kolanyane-Kesupile’s Ted Talk, I am oriented towards the notion of “building bridges between selves” and how this can be a tough task depending on the agent’s context. For Kolanyane-Kesupile living in Johannesburg, building a bridge back to themselves in Botswana meant connecting to their child-self through the language, play, and visceral embodied memories and knowledge of rural roots. Living in alternative contexts from where we might identify with can influence someone to perform themselves in a different way from how they might be in other contexts. For many people like Kolanyane-Kesupile, “we are erasing the very struggles that got us to where we are now” by not recognizing all encompassing narratives through rendering certain performances of identity as “not welcome here.”
Thinking back to class, when we strip people of the safety to perform their most entire selves because of dominant practiced knowledge, theories, and perspectives that subjugate alternative forms of knowing, we lose the ability to foster true engagement with others and communities. Finn (2021) describes engagement as being “fully present and open to other’s story,” but certain societal contexts generate stigma for specific narratives–social workers could be “fully present” for a client and they still might not feel safe to share their histories because of the practice context. Relationship is a “core value” of social work and building a relationship with individuals and communities necessitates embracing how the client shows up and whatever knowledge with which they lead (Finn, 2021). If “engagement calls on us to honor the dignity and full personhood of all” groups and people with whom social workers are in relationship, Finn, (2021) reminds us that the systems we use to help people lack honor for the full personhood of those with whom they work.
How can social workers navigate the tension between being “fully present” for clients while operating within institutional frameworks that implicitly or explicitly render certain performances of identity as “not welcome here”? How might they actively resist erasing the struggles that shape a person’s full selfhood while still working within systemic constraints?