Dr. Durryle

Narrative Sovereignty
The politics of interpretation, credibility, and being misread.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the labor of navigating unequal interpretive systems.

How human beings come to know, reduce, distort, recognize, or dignify one another through narrative.

How quickly partial information becomes interpretation.
How interpretation becomes identity.
How identity hardens into social “truth.”

And how some people move through the world with greater interpretive protection than others.

Particularly the intellectual, emotional, and relational work marginalized people often perform to clarify, contest, deconstruct, or reconstruct narratives imposed upon them.

This is an attempt to think through the politics of interpretation:
Who gets believed?
Who gets grace?
Who gets reduced?
Who gets complexity?
Who gets narratively trapped?

And what kinds of relational and institutional practices become possible when we slow down interpretation long enough for inquiry, humility, and complexity to emerge.

Would love to hear what resonates for you.

EpistemicLabor LiberatoryPractice CriticalTheoryOfLove ConflictTransformation OrganizationalCulture

What happens when love is taken seriously in social justice work?

Recently, my session on Utilizing a Critical Theory of Love in Our Social Justice Work received strong feedback at ACPA26…

And now, it’s being invited to reach a broader, international audience through ACPA’s virtual learning series.

I don’t take that lightly.

Because this work isn’t just about ideas—it’s about practice.

It’s about asking:

* What kinds of love are we practicing in our organizations?
* Are they reinforcing harm… or cultivating liberation?
* And how do we actually operationalize love in the face of conflict, burnout, and systemic pressure?

The response to this session reminds me that people are hungry for frameworks that help them do love differently—not just talk about it.

This is what the Critical Theory of Love is meant to support:
A deeper discernment of how love shows up in our policies, relationships, leadership, and systems.

And how we can shift it toward justice and healing.

If this resonates with you…

Bring this work to your campus, team, or organization.

Let’s build practices of love that can actually hold the weight of the world we’re trying to change.

DM me or visit my link in bio to explore working together.