A Genealogy of Refusal : Walking away from crisis and scarcity narratives Main Menu Crisis narratives frame our response Bartleby at the Wall How can fiction and popular culture inform the way we promulgate or refuse crisis & scarcity narratives in librarianship? Proud Descendants who "Prefer not to" Some recent gems from Bartleby's lineage A Kinship Diagram of Workplace Refusal Satire is rich Comedic instances of workplace refusal are especially powerful Dark side of parody More Satire When Expectations Cross the line Why don't librarians "Just say No"? Do we prefer to suffer in silence because its a vocation and not "just a job" Feminized Labour Saying Yes all the Time Superhero Librarians It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a librarian! I am not your hero Murderbot: the alternate patron saint for librarians The invocation of crisis narratives is relentless No individual solution to our problems Debunking myths that hold us back to enable collective ways of moving forward What refusal can we take up? A Cosmic Gift Manifest NO Becoming fluent in hearing and saying No Bibliography Works cited, featured, mentioned and consulted for Genealogy of Refusal project Glossary of Key Concepts Multiple Paths A compendium of paths through the Genealogy of Refusal content: a choose-your-own-adventure approach to this companion piece. Genealogy of Refusal Timeline We welcome contributions Learn how to contribute to this project About the Authors Multimedia project for the The Canadian Journal of Academic Librarianship Special Issue on Refusing Crisis Narratives

Asset Framing

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In the above image, Wellspring by artist Charles Luna, a woman holds a small child in patch of grass in the desert. The viewers' eyes might dance between the city-scape in the background, the artist's models in the foreground, and the desert all around. And yet, our eyes always come back to the center, to the oasis the pair make. Instead of lamenting the desert and all that they do not have, the woman and child are focused on each other and all they DO have when they are together.

Exercises such as engaging with this artwork emphasize Asset Framing over Defect Framing. As articulated by Trabian Shorters, is about shifting narratives, so that instead of defining individuals or communities by what they lack, we instead "define a people by their aspirations and contributions." In other words, instead of lamenting the pair's surrounding environment, we instead would define them based on what they have, their hopes, and their contributions to the world around them.

Planning and engaging in work for libraries and archives through the lens of asset framing similarly shifts our perspective. When we think about Archivists and Librarians in this context the first thing that comes to mind is how they often work in organizations where resources for preservation and archives are "never enough". Similarly, maintainers in all fields of work can be envious of budgets for peers' projects in Innovation which always seems to trump maintenance when resources are divvied up.

Decision makers would often rather 'invest' in innovation than budget for maintenance. Decision makers sometimes hire or promote on this basis too, for potential rather than based on a record of success or provable qualifications. This cavalier "No risk, No reward" mindset leads to inequitable pay structures and work assignments when organizations prioritize and incentivize it as an unwritten rule about how to hire, promote, or do effort assignments.

Positioning workplace refusal and Doctorow's work without leaderboards in Walkway in this context  we can begin to see more clearly how incentivizing risk-takers and competition over mainteannce or sustainability doesn’t in and of itself  make people or situations better.

Staging honest conversations about the need for support does improve projects and outcomes. Being able to say and be heard when you speak that : "If I’m going to do this[new project x] succesffuly, I’m going to need to give up   y, and get help from z. "

Or practicing saying no in your personal and professional life  - it's a great way to stop burning yourself out, and letting yourself and others down.

Seriously. Burnout by Nagoski and Nagoski
 

Jessica Meyerson at Educopia has a great way of putting this conundrum about what to do "first". When talking with her about how how the personal is a precursor to community work she counsels that identifiying "the hardest lies we have to stop telling ourselves is the hardest work we need to do."

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  1. Table of Contents Natalie K Meyers