You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Chair: Donald Moss
Discussant: M. Fakhry Davids
Presenters: Anton Hart, M. Fakhry Davids
Reporter: Kristin White
The panel “Finding one’s voice in chaotic times” was led by three expert writers and researchers on the topics of racism, racial issues, diversity and otherness: Donald Moss and Anton Hart from New York and M. Fakhry Davids from London. They describe themselves in their introduction as “three senior analysts, one born as a Black South African Muslim, one born as an African-American Jew and one born as a white American Jew”. We were told at the beginning of the panel discussion that the three panellists had worked together for some years, discussing their clinical work and their papers together. The warmth and openness of the conversations between the discussants was clearly a product of their longstanding working relationship. In the panel discussion itself, the discussants certainly found their voices with an honest and critical discussion of their own and each other’s clinical material.
However, the panel discussion began with a practical exercise in dealing with what it felt like being othered and unwanted and not having a place to stay in chaotic times: The room that had been allocated to this panel discussion was far too small to hold the around 90 participants. Those who came first took one of the 30 or so chairs. The others tried to bring in chairs from the hallway. But this posed a fire risk according to the wardens, so we then all tried to move out into a larger space in the hallway, taking just a few chairs for those who needed them most. The rest of us sat on the floor. But very soon we were ousted from this space, too, it being apparently a work space for the organisers. It felt a bit like an experience of being migrants with no fixed abode being told repeatedly to move on. Back in the original room, with most of us squeezed together on the limited floor space (again a reminder of the cramped living spaces allocated to the unwanted peoples of our w