Hey, we're going to meet in an hour to talk about Turbulence podcast's episode: "Fanon and Psychic Resistance w/Lara Sheehi" (you can also watch/listen in the embedded youtube thing below):

For the past few months I've been thinking a lot about what role technology (and more specifically HCI or human-centered computing) has to offer in the struggle for liberation. Listening to Lara Sheehi work through some of the same struggles in psychoanalysis, especially in the face of Zionism and the ongoing genocide of Palestine, gave me a lot to reflect on in my own work and practice.

I don't want to commit too much to written form at this moment, but I'll say that while I would totally understand if someone felt there was a kind of cognitive dissonance to the ideas of simultaneously wanting to change her field and also a profound ambivalence (maybe existential disinterest?) in the field's future (or demise), I personally resonated with it enormously. I'll say more during the chat, but for now I can only say that I totally got it.

I'm also really resonating with Sheehi's experience of being told by people in psychoanalysis that what she's doing is not psychoanalysis - like in the midst of this intensely conflicted moment where one might not even be sure if they even want to do psychoanalysis, to produce work striking at the heart of the problem as you're finally recognizing it, and then for senior members in the academy and the profession to say "that's not xyz" is also, depressingly, really relatable.

I'm also curious how people in the group will feel (or I guess did feel) considering we've read Fanon in the past, and we had some background to this podcast episode (a degree of background that I admittedly don't always have when I'm sitting down to listen to a podcast lol).

video chat details

In about an hour (at 5p ET, or 9p UTC) let's get together and chat about whatever we've read this week. The link to join is here (if that doesn't work, the url is below)

https://al2.in/ReadingGroupRoom

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