Liminal Spaces Lab LLC

As I settle down from attending Race Forward’s Facing Race 2024 conference last week, I’ve been deep in thought about what it will take for us to re-humanize our interactions with one another, both in our personal lives as well as in our professionalized spaces. This is something that I’ve contemplated and had discussions about with many friends and colleagues over the years. Engaging our positionalities has largely been framed as a self-reflection exercise that encourages us to interrogate our identities and life experiences, and how these identities influence every aspect of our engagement with others (originally in research and other positions/spaces where power differentials lean in our favor). This much needed practice can help us draw direct correlations between how our social orientations both positively and adversely impact how we navigate our relationships, our workplaces, and even “the work” itself. And yet, relatively few of the formalized institutions many of us have been educated under have adequately conditioned us to turn our own critical eyes inward, to become life-long learners of ourselves. What would it mean to become disciplined in our commitment to really seeing ourselves and others? To becoming acutely attuned to seeing ourselves IN others? And how can we further expand our understanding of positionality not just as a personal practice, but as a political one? What would it look like to frame positionality practice as a societal exercise in mutual care? To experience it as a measure of love? An indicator of our humanity? A prerequisite to liberation? Rarely is positionality practice a grand gesture; if anything it offers us small moments to be accountable, to imbue meaning and intention into our actions, thought processes, and decisions. When practiced genuinely and humbly, we can learn so many lessons about what it means to truly be in right relationship with ourselves, others and our natural environment. Of course - like anything involving people - this will require a cultural shift and a million small disruptions to the business-as-usual model. All that said, these thoughts are way outside the bounds of this blog post. I’ve offered a few evaluator-specific ways we can begin to center positionality practice, however, I hope others find seeds that you can take back and plant in your own fields. In the words of sci-fi Seer Octavia Butler: "All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you."