129th chat, Tuesday July 28 2020: “critical” discourse as a smokescreen
6 pm Pacific / 7 pm Mountain / 8 pm Central / 9 pm Eastern

moderated by @katkimbell & @freyjawaru
Wakelet (compilation of tweets) (pdf) by @violetbfox

suggested resources:

Ferretti, J. A. (2020). Building a Critical Culture: How Critical Librarianship Falls Short in the Workplace. Communications in Information Literacy, 14 (1), 134-152. https://doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2020.14.1.10

discussion questions:

• Q1. What are some examples of using ‘critical’ discourse as a smokescreen to support power? Feel free to pull from your own experience or from @citythatreads’ article. #critlib
• Q2. Let’s unpack the difference in the teacher/student relationship versus the library colleague relationship that @citythatreads writes about on p. 136-137. How is power constructed differently in these two sets of relationships? #critlib
• Q3. @citythatreads writes “…we aren’t focusing on empathy building, vulnerability, interrogating systems of structural inequities, and critical thinking when it comes to interacting with or working with colleagues” (p. 145). Why don’t we? What gets in the way? #critlib
• Q4. @citythatreads writes that “critical librarianship can seem performative” (p. 137) and that “it’s very possible for reputation and praxis to be in conflict with each other (p. 138). In what ways have you seen examples of this in the library Twitter community? #critlib
• Q5. How can we hold our #critlib community accountable on social media? How can we practice @mckensiemack’s “generous accountability” and ensure that #critlib is not experienced by BIPOC library workers as an exclusionary community (@citythatreads, p. 141)?