Contagion, Contamination, and Containment

Jo: [00:00:00] Hello listeners. This is Jo Hsu in this episode of unpack this. My co-host Constance Bailey and I explore conspiracy contagion, contamination and containment. We talk about Constance’s undergraduate course, which centers, these topics and their intersections, as well as a short article of mine, titled “Containment and Interdependence: epidemic logics in Asian American racialization.”

In that article, I’m looking at how ideas of contagion and contamination have been used to isolate, exclude, and otherwise harm Asian-American communities in the United States and how those narratives have prevented. Coalitional politics more broadly. Thank you for joining us. And we hope you enjoy the discussion.

Welcome to unpack this where academic misfits go to unload their shit. This is Jo Hsu

Constance: And I am Constance Bailey.

Jo: And today we’re going to be talking about contagion. this was my proposal. So I guess, I’ll speak briefly about why I brought it up. I feel [00:01:00] like by now, three years into the pandemic, most academics have been looped into some version of.

Writing about talking about teaching about in some way, rhetorics of contagion or illness or containment and how they apply to our present moment. I thought it’d be interesting to visit some ways that we have done that. And also, because what you and I do so often applies directly to what’s happening around us or what we experienced.

I thought it’d be an opportunity to, to highlight that as well.

Constance: Yeah. Now I’m glad you chose this topic. It’s really interesting to me for a lot of reasons. So

Jo: Yeah. So I guess I’ll start by asking you to sum up the course that you’re teaching. I had you send me the syllabus. I know you’ve taught it more than once, so maybe can you explain to our listeners what it is?

Constance: Yeah. Sure. So it’s, I don’t actually know if the order on the syllabus is correct, or if it’s the way that I actually teach it. But, conspiracy, contagion and [00:02:00] contamination are kind of the three. Main areas that we focus on. And in conspiracy, mostly thinking about, medical ethics, or having conversations about medical ethics and thinking about in the wake of COVID-19 and so much, for black Americans, the Tuskegee experiment and, HELA cells and thinking about the exploitation of vulnerable populations when it comes to that has really spawned a lot of, very problematic, right?

Conspiracies that, in some ways are impediments to, effectively sort of treating and addressing, this

pandemic. And so, uh, conspiracy sometimes I think. Initially when the students see it, they’re like, how does this relate to contagion and contamination, which aren’t really mutually exclusive, but we

do sort of talk about those terms and infectious disease as a term

and, . I saw other people talking about similar courses, pandemic literature, or similar things, contagion [00:03:00] all, as you said, kind of spawned by being deeply immersed in a pandemic. But the other thing is that I wanted to many years ago, I wanted to be an epidemiologist. And so when I was in high school, I did a biomedical research internship, and, I didn’t end up going the science route that a lot of my friends did because I was calibrating pipettes all summer.

I think I got paired with like a pharmacologist. So I had the boring science stuff and I kind of fell out of love with it. But at one point, immunology and epidemiology was really, really close to my heart. I also saw, um, what is it, an autopsy? I did like a hundred clinical hours in allied health in high school.

I think, yeah, pathologist, I want to say performed that. So I don’t know that I could get through enough science courses to make it to become an epidemiologist because I was a little put off by some of it. So at any rate that still is?

Near and dear to my heart.

And then also as a folklorist, I’m very interested in narratives about. That the stories we shape, as a result of our [00:04:00] encounters with disease and, contamination and so on and so forth. Yeah.

That’s a really long-winded response, but I know that you have a similar, article, right.

That has a similar topic. So, um, talk a little bit about that. So I think the article containment and interdependence epidemic, logics and Asian American racialization. Had you thought about that before the pandemic, or is this an outgrowth of.

Jo: yeah, so I had been writing around it a lot before the pandemic, because. , the current book project, the one that’s going into publication right now looks at the history of Asian-American racialization, which is deeply steeped in rhetorics of containment, uh, contamination, and also conspiracies. And I saw a lot of those themes re-emerging in our Current moment, particularly with the way that, uh, Asian-American politics have re-emerged in our public discourse. And I [00:05:00] was really struck by just sort of. When I say our, I mean, this country more broadly, our historic amnesia in terms of, you know, how our current, social political climates are established, how people understand the other humans whom they encounter in everyday life.

And so I was really struck when, anti-Asian, uh, sentiment was really making the news. I was struck by a lot of prominent Asian American figures, making statements. Oh, Asian-Americans are encountering this, hostility that they’ve never experienced before, or, you know, this was a huge thing in the past, but obviously it’s not one in the present.

And , now this is this emerging wave and, you know, it comes from, uh, a very particular Asian American experience that is not the case for a vast majority of Asian-Americans. But because that one experience of the white proximal, upper middle-class Asian American is so much the. Dominant figure of the Asian [00:06:00] American in US imagination, that is still the narrative that is, largely publicly circulated.

So, what I wanted to do with that article is sort of unearth the way that the conflation of Asian-Americans with contagion has been used historically, like is very much a part of how we came into this country. and also how the use of that.

Narrative of contamination to contain both physically contain Asian-Americans to sequester them outside of, white neighborhoods at the time.

, and to create immigration bans for example, but also to rhetorically contain them as so indelibly foreign, right. That they’re bringing in these outside contagions , it creates this, Notion of Asian-Americans as perpetually outside of the U.S. As perpetually, not a part of our history, which forecloses these possibilities of discussing and exploring the interrelations of Asian-Americans with other racialized minorities in the United States.

And, and I’ve probably [00:07:00] said this before, but that is how white supremacy thrives right. By. Containing us and making it difficult for us to talk about our interdependencies. So yeah, that’s sort of how I got there to this. What was a pretty brief article, touching on those points, but thank you for asking.

Constance: Yeah, no, I was really, I mean, you’re right. I have heard you talk about, I mean, we sort of casually talked about it, but I had not heard and actually was not aware. Of the, uh, publication. So I was really glad to be able to take a look at it into to see, you know, those informal thoughts kind of codified in a way that I could digest them at one time and kind of parse them out.

So yeah,

I appreciate that.

Jo: Well, speaking of digestability then when I was looking at your syllabus, I was wondering how you frame the course for students, you know, is particularly because you’re situated in English department, you largely teach, um, courses that are situated in literary conversations. When you start the course, how do you tell students, why are we studying these things?

And particularly if they come in, like, why are we [00:08:00] talking about conspiracy, contagion and contamination all at the same time, you know, how do you set up the class?

Constance: Yeah. I mean, That’s a really great question in the sense that it’s kind of ironic because although, you know, the class is situated in a literature, you know, in English, department The course is rethinking literature. And I think that I get, uh, often get assigned to that course is a relatively new course for us because I do teach non-traditional

texts and I often teach texts, that aren’t you know, quote unquote literature and write with a capital L and it’s sort of ironic then that in this class, it’s probably a class that I teach.

The most sort of traditional literary texts. Right. So even though some of them are like, genre fiction, so there’s Michael Crighton, of Jurassic park fame. So not necessarily what people would consider high brow. But there’s also Margaret Atwood, so, I have to say, it’s probably the class that I have taught. Almost entirely with literary [00:09:00] texts, which is strange

But yeah, I think I just said, you know, because we are in this moment where, pandemics and epidemics, you know, are so much a part of our life, that, that, was the immediate, impetus for the course.

And so we talk a little bit about the difference between a pandemic and an endemic, and an epidemic. And, we just introduce, concepts like infectious disease. We watch a really. An ancient documentary called anatomy of a pandemic from when H1N1, the swine flu, was pervasive.

And then Dr. Fauci had a head full of hair and the students it’s so interesting because they hadn’t thought about because in some ways our responses are still the same, right. Our responses to pandemics and epidemics are exactly the same as they’ve been.

Uh, for, you know, decades really. And. It was interesting for them because what feels like unprecedented times for, for them and, it was interesting to see, wide-scale masking, [00:10:00] during different, uh, points in history. So I think it’s great because it takes, you know, Particular cultural moment that we happen to be in, connected with some, literary examples, but it also allows us, I mean, we do, I’m always going to look at internet memes if I can, because they’re hilarious, but, so we try to scrutinize those to, unearth some, some deeper meaning and yeah. So, I’m not sure, I don’t know if that even answered the question,

Jo: yeah. I mean, okay. So I think you did, you answered the question in a sideways sort of way, in terms of setting up the course, right? We have conspiracy contagion contamination. How do you talk about the ways these things interact, particularly for our audience members, who might also be wondering about that connection and.

I’m asking both how they interact in the text that you’re looking at, but also how you see those things resonating in our current moment.

Constance: Oh, gosh. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting, right? Because I mean, one of the things that we ultimately end up [00:11:00] saying, it’s like, this is a chicken and egg conversation. So narratives about, for instance, typhoid, Mary right who was a,

Cook.

And so, thinking about quote unquote essential workers, does her. Identity as, what some scholars called patient zero, right. As someone who, supposedly, you know, where this point of origin for this infectious disease begins. Does that person or so does the contagious disease then. Spark the narratives or conversely, like do the narratives shape how we think about disease. I’m not being very articulate in that, but in some ways that the two inform each other. Right. And so we think about the ways in which, and this is very similar to your observations in your article, the ways in which minorities, get scapegoated as, uh, groups who are particularly associated with,

Contagion and contamination.

In part because, there was a social class stratification. And so the types of industry and jobs that they end up working in, well, if you think about food service as a place where we often see [00:12:00] contamination rumors spread It and originate, that’s sort of interesting in the way.

That is, often racialized, or, again, associated with, um, a certain social class. So in some ways we talk about the narratives as an outgrowth. Of, particular groups, identities, and ways to address fears about particular groups. Um, but we also just in terms of the organization, that’s sort of interesting, right? We start with kind I’m going to say, it’s not really a canonical text. The organization is a little bit arbitrary, I will say. So we won’t talk about that, but, but just in terms of situating, the course, I think the students are really, uh, had not thought about those narratives, they hadn’t thought about like, there was a measles epidemic. Maybe about 10 years ago and how the narratives are very different when that’s, upper-middle-class, white communities that are largely responsible for an outbreak of a disease and how you don’t see this large scale, public, um, attack of this [00:13:00] particular group and you don’t see, you know, the repercussions when it terms to, to your points, containment and ways to actually sort of restrict movement of those groups.

And so, yeah, I mean, it’s really, really interesting. There’s a great text. It’s called kiss of death and it’s like contagion. It’s like stories about contagion contamination. Andrea Kitta is the scholar.

And then there’s also one an epidemic of rumors by John Lee. And so it looks at, narratives about disease. And so I’d like to assign students readings from those to kind of give them a little bit of context, I mean, in some ways, We, we try to talk about how this idea of contamination and contagion and, uh, consequently, you know, conspiracies, how they’re not mutually exclusive, how they’re sort of feeding into each other, if that makes sense.

Jo: It makes perfect sense. Uh, I actually, I want to sort of zoom in or get deeper into what you were saying in terms of the chicken or egg thing because what we both, what both of us do actually is think about the ways that language affects life and vice versa. Right? [00:14:00] And so thinking about the examples that are most immediate to me, .

, so when early Asian immigrants were scapegoated for syphilis outbreaks, even though those outbreaks weren’t actually particularly concentrated among Asian American communities, these communities were narrativized as diseased as living in poverty, as you know, more prone to particular conditions because they were living in unclean conditions.

And it was one of those things where the narrative fulfilled its own prophecy, right? If you narrate this community as inherently impoverished, as more likely to be sick, as more likely to, you know, catch these things because of uncleanliness et cetera, you’re also going to deprive them of the resources. They were .

Literally barred from hospitals where white people went. So you sort of resigned them to this particular fate. And then the other thing that was making me think of two was early on in 2020, when people were still trying to figure out what COVID even was. There was this narrative [00:15:00] of, oh, it’s this thing happening in Asia or, oh, it’s this thing happening in the big cities.

It’s not here. It’s not where we are right now. And this attempt to rhetorically or narratively contain it somewhere else, even though, you know, the virus does not listen to our narratives becomes it’s a way of perpetuating that actual contagion. Right? So there’s a way that either what you’re saying is not yet true and then becomes true, or what you’re saying is, so in denial of what’s happening, that it actually ends up perpetuating the harm that it’s trying to, ward off.

Constance: Yeah, no, that’s exactly what it is. Yeah. I think the idea of the, quote unquote self fulfilling prophecy, right? That, that, Yeah. That those public narratives shape policy decisions. Right. And that, you know, the way that we talk about groups

then have implications that create those groups live. um, experience and their conditions such that yeah, if you then deprive people of the same [00:16:00] economic opportunities, they are going to be living in squalor and they are going to be probably, more subject to, some of the things that make, certain types of, infectious disease, overcrowded living conditions, lack of access to healthcare and so on and so forth.

Yeah, they’re going to be more. Being an outbreak is going to be more pervasive, uh, in those groups. So, yeah, that’s a really excellent point about how the rhetoric, then sort of contributes to, the, shoot, whatever the word is. Distribution

Jo: the distribution of harm. Yeah. We see that right now with COVID with preexisting conditions, right? These people are more likely to get sick or to have terrible outcomes because they’re, you know, they have these preexisting conditions without delving into why, we’ve created these preexisting conditions in particular communities that have been deprived access to affordable health care, to nourishing food, et cetera, et cetera.

Um, but yeah. Before we derailed too far. Uh, I did want to stick with the course. I had some more questions, particularly because you’ve taught this already before.

So one [00:17:00] of the great things about reteaching a course is that you get to learn from the last time that you taught it. I’m wondering if you were surprised by anything the last time that you, rolled this out.

Constance: Yeah. So I actually just want to give a brief aside for listeners. So today is MLK day. If you hear a screaming child in the background, we should not even edit that out because Joe and I want you to understand how life affects us all. And there is a school holiday, but even if there was not a school holiday, our school district had to pivot to virtual.

Unexpectedly, because there were not enough teachers and staffs who were, well enough to be able to conduct,

In-person school. So at any rate, if you hear screeching, just ignore it. Um, but yeah, so great question. Yeah, I taught it, well I taught it twice concurrently, so it’s interesting really to see the difference across sections in terms of what resonated with.

You know what didn’t, and, I’ll teach it again this semester. I taught a text, um, I’m not even going to attempt the author’s last [00:18:00] name, but we can put it in the show notes. Matt w something he’s a British author, but it’s called Hydra. And I basically, I don’t know how time works.

So I had too many texts. And so it ended up being like an additional text that the students did group projects on and what’s struck me as interesting was that in one section students didn’t see how it fit in kind of at all with the text so that the narrative is interesting because the book is structured like a podcast.

I’m a true crime podcast fan. I think that’s where we’d sort of differ a little bit in terms of our podcasts interests. But, so it’s about like a young woman who is at this point in. She killed her whole family. Right. She had like an episode, I guess, when she snapped and she’s in jail and this person is interviewing her over the course of the episodes and all of these things are unfolding.

And, a lot of the students, again in one section didn’t understand, they thought it was interesting and they really liked the story. They didn’t see how it fit in with the other narratives. And I think that’s because, and [00:19:00] this semester I want to play up more the shaping of narratives and stories and, how those, shape our existence.

Right. Because a large part of it was by the time you got to the end of the, uh, of the book slash podcasts. It became apparent that her story was very similar to like the slender man story that ,happened about, I think it was about a decade ago where these girls, claim that slender man, caused them to kill this or to attack this other young woman and try to kill her.

But, So the character may be suffering from some type of paranoid. Schizophrenia maybe, but she’s talks about the dead eye children and she’s having these episodes that lead up to that, but she’s not getting appropriate medical treatment. So either the denial or the suppression of there’s actually a condition that needs to be addressed, but then also this sort

of interesting narrative that’s unfolding from other people about like, Oh, yeah, you know the story about the dead eye children, or, you know, this.[00:20:00]

Kids kind of casually recount stories without thinking about the larger context. So in some ways it’s really about the stories that there is a conspiratorial aspect to it. So I can see how it doesn’t explicitly, cause there’s not this sense of contagion, right. There’s not an infectious disease involved.

Um, so that, I think for them. Through them for a loop. So I think sometimes the connection between conspiracy seems more tenuous than I would like it to be. Because in part, when we initially talk about conspiracy, I talk about medical ethics and I talk about HELA cells and we don’t necessarily talk about.

As much, right? The idea that like 5g cell towers were take over your, you know, your brain, right. Which is very much, you know, a part of conspiracy and it’s relevant, but I might want to play that up. So if that answers the question, that’s the thing. I think students struggle with the most And that I’d need to probably do more to connect for them.

Jo: And all that. I mean, [00:21:00] that brings me to the flip side, which is my last question for you, which is what topics students seemed particularly interested in. I, one of my fears and talking about COVID though I do, because you know, there are a lot of super relevant, features of our moment that feel, it feels like just as a matter of responsibility we need to address, I’m always afraid.

Students are like, w we are very sick of hearing about these right now. So

what, what would students pick up on.

Constance: Yeah, Well, that’s interesting because I talk about COVID very little if at all, right. Because you’re living it and then you don’t want to hear about it. So it’s great to see them make the connection to themselves when we just even talk about like, how.

Certain strains of influenza are and how deadly, seasonal influenza can be and so a lot of students said that they didn’t know, like, when we watch anatomy of a pandemic, they’re like, I didn’t know, that vaccines, for the flu were made in eggs.

And that, they didn’t know that, there’s some people who can’t take vaccines because they have a deadly, response. And so it’s really. I love that they are [00:22:00] getting some type of, it’s not really even historic context, really, because they are humanities students, right.

They’re in college. So, they haven’t chosen, biology as a major, um, some things that, um, seem counter, they don’t, they’re not really common knowledge that when I think about it, I think because I was interested in science and immunology and virology, maybe some of it feels like common knowledge to me.

But I’m always shocked at how little of that, um, you they know. Um, but then the other thing I think is for them to think about the narratives and how many people become aware of their own privilege when they think about how groups are othered with certain narratives around disease. So I think, that is something, uh, I’m really glad that they take away from the course seems to have been something they take.

From the course. Um, yeah. Did that kind of answer the question a

Jo: Yeah, that’s it. I hope, I hope it’s a really good semester. You know, all things not withstanding about the rest of the [00:23:00] surrounding environment.

Constance: Tell me about it. Well, so I do have one other, well, I would say two other questions, but one you kind of already answered really, which was about the intersection between the book and your research, because this, I feel like it’s a great quote. Um, but I think in some ways, Speaks to the, like the crux of the argument, in this article that we should also, footnote or whatever for our show notes, for readers.

But, um, I thought, you know, maybe if you could unpack it, right, so you say that I argue that any pursuit of justice for Asian Americans must respond to and take responsibility for the implications of our stories with anti-blackness colonization and hetero. Normativity that this difficult work or relating is necessary for breaking cycles of containment and devastation.

So I thought that was a great sentence. So that’s a Jo sentence, but you know, unpack that for.

Um,

Jo: it’s a lot of things in one sentence. Um, It is also sort of at the heart of my work, which is that we need to be able to talk about how our histories, [00:24:00] our wounds, our paths to liberation are necessarily dependent on one another. And I tell this, I tell my students this all the time, the things that we talk about are hard talk about for a reason,

the language that we use, particularly when it is the dominant vernaculars that we’ve been given intentionally, make it hard to talk about things like intersectionality, right. , or to talk about things like systemic racism, and there’s a reason, everyday discourse leans towards, or is pulled by the gravity of say individualism, um, in ways that make it hard to wrap our words around what’s happening.

But I think we need to sort of lean into that difficulty because it’s part of, what’s keeping us from more, transformative movements. And so I was noticing particularly when we were just starting to talk about anti-Asian sentiment. The articles that were coming out about COVID were either about anti-Asian violence or about the disproportionate rates of COVID infection and fatalities among black and brown [00:25:00] communities.

But they were never discussed in combination, which blew my mind as somebody who studies Asian history and. The weaponization of Asian-Americans against other racialized minorities is again, very, very much a part of this history. Right? So the idea that Asian-Americans came in and were then blamed for the harms perpetuated onto, you know, black and Latin X and native American community.

That’s very much a part of the history and very much what was happening, right. That we’re calling this the China virus while U S policy and U S government officials were blatantly mishandling a pandemic. , and those harms were being, you know, disproportionately experienced by black and brown communities.

All of that is very much a pattern that folks weren’t discussing, that I thought. You know, really harmful actually in, in that we’re not seeing the way [00:26:00] these things are connected and that in order to break that pattern in order to stop perpetually perpetually scapegoating Asian-Americans as the foreigners, in order to stop accepting, you know, the disproportionate rate of quote unquote pre-existing conditions in Black communities, we would need to see how these things are connected.

so I hope that answers that a little bit.

Constance: Yeah, no, it does. And I mean, I think one, one really great point that, you know, that quote speaks to you and that’s your observations speak to, is that, it’s so hard sometimes for people to deal with. I think for a group who has been disproportionately. Sorry, disproportionately affected by, racism and, colonialism, imperialism, and so forth to think to stop and say like, okay, let me give the example because I’m now trying to, Go somewhere, rhetorically, that the example we’ll just make more clear in the wake of the anti-Asian violence and particularly given the swiftness of, um, [00:27:00] the Biden administration’s response to some of that eat, You had people.

I had friends and family members saying, you know, well, they haven’t done anything about, state sanctioned violence, basically police violence against black people, or implying, that, um, Asian-Americans have sort of tacitly benefited from it and perhaps explicitly benefited from, anti-black racism and, I’m having to pause and say, Hey, two things can be true at the same time.

Like, yes, you’re absolutely right. That’s the government, like things need to be done, but this idea of pitting two groups against each other who are, oppressed or marginalized is. is. how capitalism and how all of these systems win. Right?

And so like, let’s not do this. And so it’s been hard to get people to stay because, the pain of black Americans was palpable after the George w well, after Mike Brown and after George Floyd and after Sandra bland, after every, and it’s the cumulative [00:28:00] effect of that weight psychologically and emotionally.

Feels like just too much. So I do get it, when people are, upset and frustrated, but I’m like, but you’re also directing your anger at the wrong people. So in some ways I feel like rhetorically, you know, your article starts to get at like how can we, stop working at cross-purposes and how can we try to, move towards a more progressive agenda?

I think.

Jo: Yeah, I really appreciate you bringing that up because I think we see a lot of this happening in our own communities and it just, it feels so pervasive and difficult to respond to in time because I’m thinking about how

Over 85, particularly queer Asian American groups signed a statement, opposing the COVID-19 hate crimes act, which was supposed to address anti-Asian American hate crimes. But they were opposing this, obviously because it’s a pro policing measure in the name of quote-unquote defending Asian American. So you see.

[00:29:00] Again, that pattern where we’re actually implementing policies. That are for white supremacy. Purportedly in defense of this quote unquote model minority

So support for this.

Jo: comes from the perspective of these Asian Americans who, for whom this sort of discrimination seems new and they’re relying on an inherently white supremacist system to save them.

And what they should have learned from this moment is that it’s not going to write the moment that they need to scapegoat you for something they will, but still there’s this response that is to, you know, Policing as if that is the thing that’s going to resolve this. And so. I’m going to try to tell this in like the most succinct way possible.

But part of the history that I trace at the beginning of the book is that colonizers arrived. And the way that colonization works is that you try to replace indigenous people on their own land. And in order to do that, you need a lot of labor that is not you. So then [00:30:00] they imported in slave people. And then when enslaved people in this case, enslaved Africans were rebelling.

They need a scapegoat, and in comes, indentured Asian laborers who are positioned as this sort of liminal figure that is quote unquote, closer to white civility because of their ability to approximate white middle-class heteronormative. You know, behaviors, but also

so perpetually foreign that they will never be eligible for citizenship.

And so there’s this very intentional, strategic leveraging of minority groups against one another. And for as long as we keep reifying those boundaries as if, one: we didn’t have people who crossed those boundaries, but also two, as if they weren’t part of the same story. As long as we keep pretending that way, we’re playing into, you know, this game that we were made to . Lose.

Constance: Yeah, for sure. That’s sounds like a very Afro pessimist, argument, but that is [00:31:00] a whole, that’s a whole like graduate seminar that I probably need to take before I could even teach. So that’s like a whole nother like episode or two or three, but yeah,

no, I agree. That’s a really great point.

I think w we will find that there. Certainly other, groups where you see that divisiveness, essentially, I’ve heard, you know, in some cases with Cuban Americans, you know, some who are either phenotypically have a closer proximity to whiteness or, because they are been afforded certain, Opportunities have had greater access to, you know, the quote unquote American dream.

They, still think, And I’m saying, you know, they, but like, not just that example, but many immigrant groups like that, they sort of buy into this narrative. Right? This is a very fallacious narrative that, um, somehow. Other minorities aren’t working hard enough or they aren’t, uh, you know, law abiding citizens or whatever the stereotypes are that get projected on to, [00:32:00] um, those bodies that we’ve othered as a way to justify, physical violence against them or physical isolation or, we’re rhetorical, containment or whatever.

Whatever treatment or mistreatment of those groups, and like whatever justification we’ve used, there’s always some people within that group who sort of buy into that, um, mentality. And it’s really unfortunate, but, hopefully articles like yours in conversations.

Like these will be,

you know, a way to, how would you say.

Jo: And of course it’s like yours. I mean, I want to emphasize too, this system is designed to teach people this, right? We are fed these narratives well before we’re given any sort of critical lens. So it is it’s super necessary to have classrooms where these conversations are had or, you know, conversations outside of academic journals, where these stories are told, because.

, you can’t expect somebody who was steeped in this, mythology from birth to just magically arrive at a more liberatory perspective, right?

Constance: Oh, [00:33:00] yeah. Oh gosh. Yeah. I mean, I could, I could tell you the stories about as a woman, you know how before I, had the opportunity to develop a more critical lens, how much crap I justified, you know, like in terms of walk, what was she wearing? Like who gives a fuck what she was wearing?

You know, it doesn’t matter. We were talking about race today, you know, at least in terms of containment, but certainly we could talk about it as it pertains to sexuality and gender and religion. And. All the ways that people, have either convinced themselves or either through, lack of access to knowledge, or lack of whatever resources, you know, have been indoctrinated to believe, certain things.

And, and that’s that unlearning process is, is difficult and fraught with challenges. So.

Jo: Yeah, that this is, it seems like a conversation for another time, but at some point I feel like we need to talk about the emotional element of having to do that on learning about your own history and your own experience as part of your graduate [00:34:00] education, because that’s a whole other layer of difficulty that some folks don’t necessarily have to experience that makes this journey particularly difficult.

Constance: Oh, gosh. Yeah, that is, we should put that down amongst many other things, so I guess, we probably, we should start to bring it home. Are there any final thoughts? We want to leave the people with,

Jo: No, I did. I hope that this is a episode that folks find interesting. I think. Where you and I intersect and both our teaching and our research is the sort of ways that language and storytelling affects lived experience. And I think that finding more genres or medium through which to explore that is one of my major projects.

And so I guess we’ll, we’ll hear back from listeners, whether or not this was, you know, worth we’re worth their 35 minutes.

Constance: For sure. Well, listen, we are starting to get a, a couple followers. You have to get emails, but feel free to hit us [00:35:00] up@theunpackthispodcastatgmail.com and on Twitter. So I want to do a correction, right? I think in previous episodes, I think what my ambitions were for our Twitter handle were, did not, uh, meet with reality.

So we are actually the underscore unpack this. And it doesn’t say podcasts at the end, but if you type in the underscore unpack this, it’ll pop up. You’ll see our cool little blue logo with our books and academic shit that we’re going to unpack. So we’ve got a handful of followers over there. We tweet every blue moon.

Um, so feel free to hit us up with suggested topics, questions, comments, whatever, and we will talk to you all soon.

Jo: All right, stay safe out there.