New Article: “Because We’re Going to Mess Up”: Practices for Accountability—Not a Piecemeal Approach

With gratitude, I write to share a new article: “‘Because We’re Going to Mess Up’: Practices for Accountability—Not a Piecemeal Approach” co-authored with good friend and frequent co-author Rasha Diab and published in College Composition & Communication (CCC). This piece has been a long time coming. We started drafting in 2019; first submitted in 2020; and have been revising, reshaping, and attempting to bring it to life these past 5+ years.

The article arises, as we explain in the text, from longings: longings for accountability rooted in loving relationship; longings for unlearning and liberating from interlocking oppressions; longings for recognizing, reckoning, and redressing wrongs; and longings for being accountable in our work as scholars and educators. 

The article, we hope, will reach others in our primary discipline of writing, rhetoric, composition, and literacy studies, where we have been shaped and where we feel responsibility. We hope, too, that it may reach beyond the field to other academics seeking to counter epistemic injustice and to all of us who are learning and longing to practice accountability.

Here is the article’s abstract, an invitation to read and be in conversation with us:

What are we in rhetoric, writing, and literacy studies currently practicing? What practices do harm, and, in contrast, which counter harm? How do we disrupt everyday, cumulative, and structural injustices and instead invest in accountability? In addition to asking these and other questions, this article engages four accountability practices that are necessary for countering the ongoing violence of the mythical norm (Lorde), of domination, and of harm within higher education: (1) resisting denial of ongoing harms; (2) recognizing normalized violence; (3) divesting from whiteness; and (4) investing in a consistent, relational approach to seeking justice. These practices help us tap into and amplify the work of BIPOC feminist and womanist educators-scholars-activists (including Ahmed, Gumbs, hooks, Mingus, and Royster) who have been countering epistemic injustice by building linguistic resources and expanding what we can name. These practices are part of a whole in which taking a piecemeal approach entrenches the current state of affairs: white supremacy status quo and normalized violence. Together, these add up to a call for striving toward justice in a sustained, momentum-gathering way.

Across disciplines, across contexts, and across all areas of life, we might take up and linger over the core questions, asking: What are we currently practicing? What practices do harm, and, in contrast, which counter harm?

And then we might linger over the practices we can name … and those we know but struggle to name, asking: What more? What else? What next?

We hope the article holds the spaces for reflecting, for asking questions, and for stopping in our tracks, willfully slowing down because each question is sure to illuminate many more. Similarly, each practice is sure to call forth other practices, whether those are to be interrupted or advocated, resisted or recognized, divested from or invested in. 

To read the full article, click here, and enter the password longings.

Also, reach out for a copy of the article or to be in conversation about practices for accountability. As Rasha and I continue this work, we appreciate learning what and how things land. Each bit of feedback is a gift. 

Acknowledgements:
There are many, many people to thank for making this article possible. These include early reader and writing coach Candace Epps-Robertson; one of our core teachers about accountability, Mia Mingus; accountability pod members, Mel Meder and Sarah Gettel; and, as we share in the article, many BIPOC feminist and womanist educators and activists.

Citation:
Beth Godbee and Rasha Diab, “‘Because We’re Going to Mess Up’: Practices for Accountability—Not a Piecemeal Approach,” College Composition & Communication (CCC), vol. 26, iss. 3, Feb. 2025, pp. 396—422.

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This post is written by Beth Godbee, Ph.D. for Heart-Head-Hands: Everyday Living for Justice. To read other co-authored articles with Rasha, check out “Microaggressions: Too Sanitized, Too Safe, and Too Small?” and “Responding to Microaggressions.”