Self‐reflection in critical social work practice: subjectivity and the possibilities of resistance

Abstract

This article explores the connection between reflection and a critical approach to social work practice. By critical social work practice is meant a refusal of/opposition to the interlocking relations of power that pervade social worker encounters with clients. Frequent mention is made in current social work literature of the importance of workers recognizing their social location in challenging racial, class, gender, heterosexual, and ableist structures of domination. Reflection on the privileges associated with social location is considered the cornerstone of such an anti‐oppressive practice, and Mary Ellen Kondrat’s article on critical self‐reflectivity provides an important theoretical contribution to, and articulation of, what this would actually look like. However, drawing on Foucault’s recognition of the power‐knowledge axis, and his conceptualization of power’s capillary form, the author argues that the possibility of resisting the reproduction of dominant power relations rests on an analysis of one’s subjectivity and subject positions.

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