The Relational School Presents 

‘Other-Wise’

“The exploration of this alternative mode of cognition, ideologically suppressed in ourselves, yet still a living force amidst large majorities…”   Sylvia Wynter (1976)

“I concede only that I know nothing. I can only insist persistently that these fugitive musings on the Blackness of it all, the Black feminism of it all, the queerness of it all, are in the interest of saying things that have long been said but saying them differently, in hopes that some of y’all might get on board with this stuff that’s been circulating for a while”.    Fred Moten

Foluke Taylor and Robert Downes will be evoking: ‘Other-Wise’ an event for psychotherapists, counsellors, psychoanalysts, and students of these practices.  

There has been a significant absence of deep study when it comes to the construct of race, embodied racialised trauma and what Resmaa Menakem calls ‘white body supremacy’ in the field of psychotherapy. So we evoke on going study as a personal and collective practice, as an ethical practice of disrupting the therapeutic project beyond its normative frames and practices. 

To deal with race, racism and the lie of whiteness is to deal with embodied racialised trauma – so we come to this day mindful of black feminist ethics and practices of care; a recognition that we are always within the problem, ‘in the wake’ as Christina Sharpe describes the after lives of the enslavement of African people and its modern day manifestation as anti blackness and racial capitalism.  

There is much talk of decolonising the curriculum these days. What might that talk be infused with if we are to practice, think, study and imagine ‘Other-Wise’?  If we take the technology of race and unravel from it and the ways it has shaped the landscape of psychotherapeutic thought, teaching and practice – what might emerge if we truly engage with other modes of embodied cognition, wisdoms and practices beyond the usual suspects and traditions? What might abolition look like in this field of thought and practice?

Drawing from their own particular carrier bags of theory and practice, (see Ursula Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Literature) Foluke and Robert will share some of what they have gathered to inform unravellings and reckonings from within the enclosure(s) of race. Working with a definition of race as ‘technology’* they introduce various other-wise technologies of thought and practice aimed at extending the reach, register, resonance, disruption and inclusivity of the therapeutic project.    (* Taken from Black Quantum Futurism: Space Time Collapse from Congo to the Carolinas). ​​​​​​​

Key Technologies: Black feminisms, critical theory, relational psychoanalytix, poetry, art, music, philosophy, abolition, the implicated subject, poesis, trouble, somatics, empire mind, study, the undercommons, 'in the wake', haunting.

You will be invited to participate via a range of practices and reflective exercises following the reading of their paper: Re-imagining the Space and Context for a Therapeutic Curriculum – A Sketch.

There is also a website resource to accompany this project of practicing, thinking and being ‘other-wise’ that you can engage with.

Foluke Taylor – psychotherapist, writer, teacher, and parent. She seeks to create spaces where therapy, poetics, creative writing, and activism converge as interconnected experiments in being and living otherwise. She is deeply nourished by Black feminism and tries to live her life through its ethical guidance. Currently, she teaches on trauma at NAOS Institute, and on Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes (CWTP) within the faculty of Applied Social and Organisational Sciences at the Metanoia Institute. Recent publications include a bio-mythography How the Hiding Seek (2018), and As Much Space as We Can Imagine: Black Presence in Counselling and Psychotherapy (2019). She has contributed a chapter to What is Normal? published by Confer in November 2020 and is currently completing a book on the development of a Black therapist’s praxis for PCCS Books.

Recommended read:   As Much Space as we Can Imagine

Robert Downes – practices as a psychotherapist, supervisor,educator and student engaged in critical psychological study drawing from a range of traditions: queer theory, black studies, critical theory, intersectional feminisms, relational psychoanalysis, Marxism(s) alongside the spiritual teachings and practices of the Diamond Approach, the music of Björk & Erykah Badu accompanied by a 20 year long dialogue and extensive hedge school study with friend and colleague, Foluke Taylor. Robert is currently chair of The Relational School.

Recommended read: Complicating the White Therapist 

To find out more about: The Relational School