Abstract
Conscientization is a primarily epistemological move from a naïve to a critical awareness of reality. It often begins in ontological disturbance, perhaps in a moment or experience of cognitive dissonance when the perception of a fact, image, or interaction conflicts with one’s beliefs about reality: the different treatment accorded a friend who is a person of color; the sight of homeless children in a shelter; war reporting revealing that “collateral damage” includes a family killed at a wedding. Something punctures complacency, and the Spirit moves into that gap to draw our attention to the fact that not all is as it should be. In some cases, we plaster over the gap, heal over the Spirit’s intrusion, ignore the knock at the door of our hearts, and go on with business as usual. In other cases, the Spirit gains a foothold: we acknowledge the compunction, and begin to attend more intentionally to reality as others experience it.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Judit Moschkovich, “—but I Know You, American Woman,” in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, ed. Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa (Watertown, MA: Persephone Press, 1981), 79–80. Emphases in original.
Ada María Isasi-Díaz, La Lucha Continues: Mujerista Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), 110.
Chela Sandoval, “Afterbridge: Technologies of Crossing,” in This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, ed. Gloria E. Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating (New York: Routledge, 2002), 25.
Lucy Tatman is a notable example; for her exploration of the epistemological underpinnings of several key feminist theologians, see Lucy Tatman, Knowledge That Matters: A Feminist Theological Paradigm and Epistemology (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2001).
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1970), 111–13.
Maria Harris, Fashion Me a People: Curriculum in the Church (Lousiville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989), 139.
Gustavo Gutiérrez, On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987), xiii. Emphasis in original.
Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 89–90.
Carroll Saussy, The Gift of Anger: A Call to Faithful Action (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 117.
Andrew Lester, Anger: Discovering Your Spiritual Ally (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 56.
Farhana Hossain, “Congressional Leaders on the Bailout Bill,” New York Times (2008), http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/30/us/politics/CONGRESS-VOTE-QUOTES.html.
Ada María Isasi-Díaz, “Solidarity: Love of Neighbor in the Twenty-First Century,” in Lift Every Voice: Constructing Christian Theologies from the Underside, ed. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite and Mary Potter Engel (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998), 32.
Works exploring the nature and effects of white-skin privilege and its interactions and correlations with racial prejudice and oppression include Robert Jensen, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege (San Francisco, CA: City Lights Publishing, 2005);
Mab Segrest, Memoir of a Race Traitor (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1994).
Tim Wise, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2005).; and
Mary Elizabeth Hobgood, Dismantling Privilege: An Ethics of Accountability (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2000). Additional resources can be found in
Paula S. Rothenberg, ed., White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism, Second ed. (New York: Worth Publishers, 2005). For an exploration of whiteness as a habit of mind,
see Shannon Sullivan, Revealling Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006).
Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack,” in White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism, ed. Paula S. Rothenberg (New York: Worth Publishers, 2005). Jensen, Heart of Whiteness. Wise, White Like Me.
Thandeka, Learning to Be White: Money, Race, and God in America (New York: The Continuum Publishing Group, 2002), 3ff.
Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present (New York: HarperPerennial, 2003 [1980]).
James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (New York: Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 1995).
Copyright information
© 2012 Tammerie Day
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Day, T. (2012). Conscientization. In: Constructing Solidarity for a Liberative Ethic. Palgrave Macmillan’s Content and Context in Theological Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137269089_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137269089_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-44377-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-26908-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)