Reflections on Radical Love and Rebellion: Towards Decolonial Solidarity in Community Psychology Praxis

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Decolonial Enactments in Community Psychology

Part of the book series: Community Psychology ((COMPSY))

Abstract

In this chapter, the author shares stories, questions, and insights into decolonial love and solidarity as critical to the building of communities of resistance against colonialism and coloniality. The author reviews Global South perspectives on solidarity and decolonial feminist theories on radical love. Furthermore, the author shares examples from his qualitative research projects and community psychology praxis in three different locations (refugee camp communities in Palestine, Mapuche Indigenous communities in Chile, and communities of color in Boston USA). These three different research sites are also distinct homespaces for the author. The author attempts at sharing examples from his research projects across these three different homespaces in a way that also includes his sharing of personal reflections and embracing the complexities that follow. As a white, Latinx, and Arab American cis-gender man working within a Global North academic institution, a critical component for the author, in his writing about decolonial feminisms, solidarity, and radical love, includes the exploration of his own embodied knowldeges, vulnerabilities, and social positionalities. The author concludes this chapter with questions and imaginations of a clinical community psychology praxis capable of fostering the emergence of new relationalities in our coalitions for healing and justice—relationalities that contest colonial patterns of power and center decolonial solidarity and radical love.

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Correspondence to Devin G. Atallah .

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Atallah, D.G. (2022). Reflections on Radical Love and Rebellion: Towards Decolonial Solidarity in Community Psychology Praxis. In: Kessi, S., Suffla, S., Seedat, M. (eds) Decolonial Enactments in Community Psychology. Community Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75201-9_5

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