Proceeding From Our Roots in the Dust: An Unfolding Ethics of Care Through the Arts (Étendre nos racines dans la poussière : une éthique des soins qui se déploie à travers les arts)

Abstract

This theoretical essay invites a reimagining of ethics in art therapy, and a questioning of the reverence of ethical codes and standards in the care professions as universally beneficial. It explores how one may practice care work without replicating systemic violence. I begin exploring these broad quandaries by drawing from partial and situated knowledges (Haraway, 1988). This writing is informed by feminist analyses and theorizations of care ethics, and written from my subject position as a racialized cisgender woman working in mental health services and an art therapy training program in Tkaronto 1 . I begin with a discussion of the discourse of professional ethics and its idealization of masculine rationality and a top-down model of accountability to contemplate why people continue to experience oppressive and unethical treatment within human service systems despite deeply cemented directives to adhere to professional codes of ethics. I argue that it is necessary to center emotions and interdependence in confronting our complicity in oppression. I conclude by contemplating an ethics of foregrounding the arts to hold space for uncertainty, responsibility, and care.