Unraveling Expertise: Knowledge and Power in Context

Where do we know from? This question, posed by professor and writer Dr. Katherine McKittrick, is a way to simultaneously locate ourselves and unravel the academic intellectual authority that shapes so much of our life and work. The current mental health system heavily values some forms of knowledge and meaning-making over others, prioritizing degreed professionalism and research at the expense of lived and embodied wisdom. This reliance on such a fixed definition of “expertise,” as well as biased notions of what is considered “evidence-based,” culminate in widespread ableism and sanism within the field and have dire consequences for care. In order to realize a more justice-oriented future, we must deeply explore what knowledge is, how its hierarchies play out, and how they can be interrupted.

This class will challenge traditional conceptions of “expertise” and “knowledge” within mental health, emphasizing the power of experiential wisdom for our personal and professional journeys. Where do you know from? Who are you learning from? How do you use that knowledge? Faculty will share relevant shortcomings of the mental health system, provide strategies to break the mold of what currently constitutes expertise, and share resources to facilitate personal and collective processes of meaning-making. In turn, we will make room for unknown territories, including the act of holding space for another’s experience, or organizing to co-create futures of transformation. Participants will leave with new strategies to help navigate the confinements of modern society and embrace more diverse ways of knowing.

• Distinguish lived experience as a valid epistemology, centering the inherent wisdom that people already possess
• Analyze processes that credit and discredit knowledge through the lenses of sanism and ableism
• Identify the ways in which fixed forms of knowledge can limit therapeutic, creative, and transformational processes
• Identify how injustices of expertise play out in the mental health system based on power dynamics between professional knowledge and lived experience
• Broaden personal concepts of meaning and expertise, to be adapted to the participant’s individual context

Andre Henry is a bestselling author, award-winning musician, and activist based in Los Angeles.

Foluke Taylor is a therapist*writer practising with an asterisk* to signal black feminist modes of care, space-making, refusal, and reimagining. Her research focuses on creative practices of writing and reading, their knowledge-producing potential and therapeutic possibilities. Foluke lived in The Gambia for over ten years (doing some adult growing up) before returning to London where she was born and lives currently. Her most recent book, Unruly Therapeutic: Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room, is published by W.W. Norton in New York and London.

Registration includes the 3-hour class session, an optional 90-minute discussion group one week after the live class (Sunday, July 14, 2024 from 12-1:30 pm EST), and access to IDHA’s School for Transformative Mental Health on Mighty Networks (our virtual learning community where you’ll have the opportunity to engage with other students and your faculty).

Email us at [email protected]

Event Venue

Online