The 2023 Anne Szumigalski Lecture presents:

On Reparative vs Paranoid Writing

The Ethics and Carework of Storytelling

with Joshua Whitehead

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick introduced us to paranoid vs reparative reading in her book, Touching Feeling, in which she argues against a hermeneutics of readerly suspicion as coined by philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, and calls for us to read as careworkers/healers for sustained community growth and empowerment. Alternatively, Leanne Simpson and Robyn Maynard introduced us to what they call “portals” in their coauthored book,  Rehearsals for Living, in which we as Black and/or Indigenous peoples approximate the utopic through the disregard of colonialism and capitalism and peek into alternative modes of being. In this talk, Whitehead will explore the ethics and protocols of being a storyteller who wishes not only for reparative reading, but reparative writing, by asking: what cost(s) does it cost the writer to write? How do we engage with stories outside of our communities and/or identities in ways that are reciprocal and nourish rather than consume and autopsy? How do we become good guests to another’s orality? And how can we be as decolonial on the page as we are on the land?

About Joshua Whitehead

Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-Cree/nehiyaw, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is the author of the novel Jonny Appleseed (Arsenal Pulp Press), which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and shortlisted for a Governor General’s Literary Award in Fiction, and the poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks), which was shortlisted for the inaugural Indigenous Voices Award for Most Significant Work of Poetry in English and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. Currently, he is working on a PhD in Indigenous Literatures and Cultures at the University of Calgary’s English department (Treaty 7).