Dr Tracey Feltham-King presented a key-note address entitled: "A Psychological Moment(um): Reflections about who we want to be" at the annual Rhodes University Psychology Department postgraduate conference on the 20th October 2017. In the presentation, she referred to a paper written by Michelle Fine (2012) entitled: “Resuscitating Critical Psychology for Revolting Times” and pointed out that the double meaning in that title is very pertinent in our context. In South Africa we try to be ethical psychologists within a system of repulsive inequality but we also have opportunities to revolt and to participate in collective protests. Drawing on this analogy, Dr Feltham-King argued that we find ourselves in “revolting times” in both senses of the word.
She started her presentation by recapping the call made by Professor Catriona Macleod who recently accepted the Social Change Award (for 2017) from the Psychology department. In her address Professor Macleod advocated for South African psychologists to pay more urgent attention to the decolonial imperative within the discipline. She provided evidence of how Psychology within South Africa is popular and well-established but remains insufficiently transformed. Since most contemporary South African psychologists work in the private sector, the Psychology that is practiced and the knowledge that is created through research, is often not accessible (or entirely relevant) to the majority of South Africans. Substantive transformation and decoloniality requires that more psychologists deliberately turn away from the resolutely individual focus of mainstream Psychology.
Dr Feltham-King argued that significant momentum has been created by a well-established group of critical South African practitioners and researchers, many of whom work at Rhodes or collaborate with the Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction Unit. Critical work in community, African, health, feminist, queer and (dis)ability studies has bolstered the recognition that mainstream psychology can inadvertently function as a form of epistemic violence. She encouraged postgraduate students to become psychologists and researchers who refuse to narrow the scientific gaze which simultaneously stigmatises and blames individuals for the enormously problematic contexts in which they live. She concluded by congratulating them on the excellent research which they were presenting at the conference and applauded their willingness to question entrenched ways of thinking by reframing individual issues in our shared social landscape.