The "Flip"-Sustaining Complexity and Multiplicity Post-Quarantine

This article describes poststructural ways of responding to the pandemic by looking for openings or gaps within more traditional ways of interacting with dilemmas. The author situates herself within a "positive deviance" epistemology, which looks for what already works rather than getting captured by the current problem. We "flip" what are the usual ways of responding and explore three different programs that illustrate inventive and assets-based approaches. Linking-Lives Storython, created specifically to utilize our COVID shelter-in-place experience; Re-Authoring Teaching: Creating a Collaboratory, begun 12 years ago to meet the needs of a widespread community; and Witness to Witness, a current response to contemporary disastrous situations-all have utilized technology to open possibilities for those who are helped as well as those who are helpers. The article shows how each program has specifically flipped more traditional ways of responding, but also how this "flip" employs a practice of "disciplined improvisation." Each program has a built-in structure that depends on technology to make it work; each has a disciplined approach that allows the helpers to improvise to meet the needs of the receivers. It is this "flip," this way of thinking, that can sustain us and our work in times of great complexity and multiplicity.