An Intersectional Framework for Race, Class, Gender, and ...

1 Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 27(1) pp. 11-17 AATA, Inc. 2010 AbstractThis article calls for an examination of identity and dif-ference from a sociocultural perspective in art therapy theoryand practice. Identity markers such as race, class , gender , andsexuality have tended to be seen in isolation and in ways thathamper the ability to understand and theorize difference. Inconstructing knowledge and in advancing more effective prac-tices, art therapists need to examine identity and difference notonly from a psychological perspective, but also from social andcultural ones.

2 An Intersectional Framework that demands self-reflexivity is presented as important to research, scholarship,organizational policy making, and theorizing that shapes arttherapy I look back on my experiences in the mental healthfield, my doubts concerning psychological theory princi-pally, its insensitivity to social and cultural forces emerged from a need to understand my own culturalencounters and hybridity. In the field of art therapy thedominant perspective on human relationships is largelyderived from male, Eurocentric teaching, which has shapedin turn theories of human development derived from psy-chology and psychopathology (Burt, 1997; Espin &Gawelek 1992; Talwar, 2002; Zinn & Thorton-Dill,1996).

3 I write out of concern for articulating the construc-tion of my reality: that of a person born and raised in a third world country, living in a first world country, andtrying to shape an identity that gives meaning to myencounters with class , race, and gender inequality. Frommy experience in the field of art therapy, I have found thatissues of difference, power, and authority mostly go unac-knowledged. As an educator, I am frustrated when researchmethodologies and scholarship ignore issues of identityand difference, and when positivist notions of humandevelopment follow narrow lines of thinking, outside ofwhich nonconformist behaviors and identities are relegatedto pathology.

4 In this article I propose that as art therapists we mustdirect our attention to cultural variability in terms of Race, class , gender , and sexuality in order to include subjectivitiesthat do not easily fit within the universalist paradigm ofhuman development. As an academic discipline, behavioralpsychology has promoted reductive conceptions of humannature. Difference and cultural diversity, when acknowl-edged at all, are reduced to the normal-versus-abnormalbinary view of pathology. Simplistic analyses of culturaldiversity camouflage oppressive power structures and neu-tralize differences, and do so without recognizing any needto alter the existing social context (Espin & Gawelek,1992).

5 Likewise, art therapy has absorbed human develop-ment frameworks in which characteristics of visual expres-sion become markers of development, and it has done solargely without examining the role of cultural and socialfactors. Fully understanding how marginalized individualshave been affected by social, cultural, and political forcesmeans bringing issues of inequality and difference not onlyinto the discussion of human growth and development,but also into our theoretical and scholarly work. Art therapy scholarship has explored issues of differ-ence from the perspective of race, ethnicity, gender , andsexuality, but it has done so mainly by viewing each as anisolated dimension of culture rather than as intersectingprinciples that shape experiences.

6 class issues largely havebeen overlooked, with the result that middle- class culturalpractices are accepted as normative and transposed ontominority populations the majority of clientele for manyart therapists. For example, Lareau (2003) highlighted theimportant role played by class in child-rearing practices inher ethnographic research. She found that the philos-ophy of child rearing typically centers on individualresponsibility in determining life s outcomes and in fulfill-ing the ideals of the American Dream, both of whichbenefit middle- class families.

7 She exposed profound differ-ences in the quality of social services received by childrenof the middle class as compared to children in poor andworking- class families. Her study emphasized how institu-tions accept and impose a standard of success that privi-leges the cultural practices of middle- class families whilemarginalizing those of poor and working- class asserted that a common economic position in soci-ety, defined in terms of social class membership, is closelytied to differences in the cultural logic of child-rearing (2003, p.)

8 31), as well as, ultimately, to the power and priv-ilege enjoyed in adult life. Feminist scholars especially women of color, gaymen, and lesbians have called for an examination of iden-tity construction and have critiqued the biased nature ofEditor s note: Savneet Talwar, MA, ATR-BC, is an AssociateProfessor of Art Therapy at the School of the Art Institute ofChicago. The author wishes to thank Cathy Moon, Shelly Goebl-Parker, Megan Robb, and Randy Vick for their support. Corre -spon dence concerning this article may be ad dressed to the authorat Intersectional Framework for Race, class , Gender, and sexuality in Art TherapySavneet Talwar, Chicago,IL1112social science research (Collins, 1990; Zinn & Thorton-Dill, 1996).

9 These scholars put forth an intersectionalmodel that accounts for race, ethnicity, class , gender , andsexuality on issues of inequality. An Intersectional analysis begins with the experiences of groups that occupy multiplesocial locations and finds approaches and ideas that focuson the complexity rather than the singularity of humanexperience (Thorton-Dill & Zambrana, 2009, p. 2). Oneof the core principles of intersectionality is self-reflexivity,especially in research and scholarship, when confronting theexperiences of the Other.

10 For example, the scholar deliber-ately makes explicit his or her role, motivations for under-taking the research, and the dimensions of power and priv-ileges that may be enjoyed on the basis of race, class , Gender, and sexuality . Much recent scholarship in art therapy has been driv-en by a need to articulate and clarify our own identities anddifferences as art therapists. In 2007, Vick edited a specialissue in this journal that focused on the experiences of menin art therapy. Hoshino and Junge in 2006 collected aseries of life stories by art therapists of color.