Feminist Data Manifest-No
1 2021-03-26T14:01:54-07:00 Anna Michelle Martinez-Montavon 1459b2fc55591cd9b08a290af468d31b5dfe46a3 33948 4 The Manifest-No is a declaration of refusal and commitment. It refuses harmful data regimes and commits to new data futures. plain 2021-04-01T14:39:57-07:00 2019 Cifor, M., Garcia, P., Cowan, T.L., Rault, J., Sutherland, T., Chan, A., Rode, J., Hoffmann, A.L., Salehi, N., Nakamura, L. (2019). Feminist Data Manifest-No. Retrieved from: https://www.manifestno.com/. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Natalie K Meyers 4b3948ab8901940da5f2eb884c2cc86b3dc6ac22This page has tags:
- 1 media/dctermstimeline.png 2021-04-12T00:11:25-07:00 Natalie K Meyers 4b3948ab8901940da5f2eb884c2cc86b3dc6ac22 Genealogy of Refusal Timeline Natalie K Meyers 36 timeline 2021-09-14T21:36:29-07:00 Natalie K Meyers 4b3948ab8901940da5f2eb884c2cc86b3dc6ac22
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Manifest NO
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Becoming fluent in hearing and saying No
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Learning to say "No" starts with us. Practicing how to Say No! More has been gamified in a lighthearted way that has captured the attention of thousands of fans as well as more than a few reviews where gamers confess how "good it feels to play the game" because saying "No" at work can be such a fraught situation (Fizbin 2021).
The below flowchart, created by Shira Peltzman, is another lighthearted but useful tool that streamlines what to do when another project gets added to your pile--but using this flowchart requires being pretty honest with yourself, your capacity, and your joy in a project.
Is an hour spent at work better than an hour spent doing something you love? How can we say NO to projects or tasks, so that we can say YES to things we love? And, even if a project meets all of those requirements, does a not-NO automatically mean a YES? (Peltzman does not end the flowchart with "accept the project," but "consider it." In other words, these are the absolute minimum requirements a project needs to meet, but even that does not mean you should automatically commit to every project that makes it through the chart.)
In learning to say NO, deciding to decline is not always enough, If we're saying "NO" at work we will eventually need to challenge those who supervise us. If a boss pressures us to commit to a new project, stay late to complete a project, and/or maintain a rapid pace of service completion, but with fewer resources, we will need to find practical and effective ways to refuse. Outright saying "No" may sometimes be impossible, but we can remind ourselves to pause and reframe the conversation. We can utilize phrases like:- I can take on this new work, but I will need your help prioritizing my other responsibilities and redistributing the tasks that I'll no longer be able to complete.
- I can complete this project early with your commitment that I'll be given these [new] resources.
- I can help with this if I have the support and efforts of collaborators X, Y, and/or Z.
She cautions that "You need more than a right to say no for no to be effective." She warns that "If your position is precarious you might not be able to afford no. You might say yes if you cannot afford to say no, which means you can say yes whilst disagreeing with something." She implores us that "This is why the less precarious might have a political obligation to say no on behalf of or alongside those who are more precarious" (Ahmed 2017).
Sometimes you say "No!" but your boss can't hear it - that situation is so common the Say No! More videogame has a scenario about it:
That's why we created a genealogy of workplace refusal. By talking about such things, by learning together how to read the story of refusal, we can have a common narrative. We can develop a common acceptance of the language of "No" that allows us to examine dead-ends and the false turns workplace responses to crisis narratives can take. Donna Lanclos urges that in higher education, we should be refusing "quantification, employability narratives, tracking and surveillance, technocentrism, [and the] 'More with Less'" ethos (2019). Looking to the art of dance, Yvonne Rainer's No Manifesto, from Trio A gives us a strong example of how to declare opposition to the dominant forms of our field (Rainer 1965):
Informing ourselves through the kinship diagram in this project, we can recognize false deficits, constructed crises, and other attempts to consolidate power by those in charge. We can see how to say no as a collective, refuse harmful data practices (like in the Feminist Data Manifest-NO), and organize ourselves for collective protest, unionize or strike. We can write and think and negotiate other ways forward that are informed by fictional, feminist, anti-racist, pro-labour, and abundant points of view.