2021: Issue 4 Archives - The Dulwich Centre

Thinking critically about attention deficit disorder: An interview with Joshua Hanan — Rory Randall

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 05:20:37 +0000

Rory Randall interviewed rhetoric professor Joshua Hanan about his paper ‘Subjects of technology: An auto-archaeology of attention deficit disorder in neoliberal time(s)’. They discuss the effects of an attention deficit disorder diagnosis, the performance of disability, activism as a way out, and the use of theory in making sense of lived experience.

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We will never walk alone in hardship: Responding to collective trauma in Hong Kong — Kwong Ka Fai

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 05:13:29 +0000

Through accounts of one-to-one and community work with people affected by the recent violence and political unrest in Hong Kong, this paper highlights a way of working with people who have experienced collective trauma. Narrative concepts such as enabling contribution, externalising the problem and collective documentation are demonstrated, and the paper focuses in particular on the use of music as a way of exploring preferred storylines and songwriting as a form of therapeutic documentation.

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‘I am more than the violence I survive’: Reflections from the Policing Family Violence Storytelling Project — Lauren Caulfield

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 05:10:05 +0000

Family violence responses that centre policing often replicate and reinforce the power and control dynamics of gender-based violence. The Policing Family Violence Storytelling Project works at the intersection of gender-based violence and state-sanctioned violence, where the harms of family and domestic violence interact with and are compounded by the harms of policing. The storytelling project integrates individual narrative therapy, collective narrative
practice and community organising to centre the insider knowledges of survivors of violence. It views the communities in which violence occurs as uniquely equipped for and invested in creative responses to harm. People who have lived with violence have significant expertise in the dynamics of violence, responding to risk and harm, and surviving systems that may reinforce or amplify the violence, punishing the very tactics people use to survive. This paper describes practices used to elicit survivors’ stories beyond the limited imperative of evidence gathering for legal processes. It also shows how these stories are used to guide and inform social action, including intervening in popular narratives that seek to make state responses synonymous with ‘safety’, and fail to recognise both the harms of these and the myriad strategies people experiencing violence use to survive.

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Mapping moral emotions and sense of responsibility with those suffering with moral injury — Zachary Moon

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 05:03:29 +0000

The few citizens who fight their nation’s battles on its behalf are often burdened with the full moral weight of war-making. The moral emotions that combatants experience – guilt, shame, disgust, contempt – can be seen as expressions of the need for moral reckoning at a societal level. Rather than seeking the alleviation of suffering within an individual body, moral injury demands reparative and transformative action from the collective bodies of which we are a part. This paper offers therapeutic practices for responding to moral emotions in ways that take moral responsibility seriously, and that move towards recovery through connecting to purpose, preferred values and possibilities for making a contribution through reparations, restorative justice and truth telling.

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Moral injury: What’s the use? — tyler boudreau

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 04:53:58 +0000

The words ‘moral’ and ‘injury’ each hold complex and multiple meanings. This paper considers the politics of framing soldiers’ distress as ‘moral injury’, and the utility of this term as a way to prompt moral questioning and transformation. Unlike PTSD, moral injury raises the need for individuals and society to grapple with the moral implications of war. For military and veterans’ organisations in particular, the idea of moral injury has been recognised as a profound challenge. Counter conceptualisations such as ‘inner conflict’ have been mobilised to reframe soldiers’ distress as a subjective misperception that requires a reassessment of a soldier’s own values, not the values and actions of the military. In this paper, boudreau argues that the value of moral
injury as a concept lies in the actions we take to address it, the clinical practices we use to treat it and the spaces we make for those affected to question, grow and change. Rather than representing an individual inner conflict, moral injury demands that we treat the violence and harm done with social permission under the auspices of the military as a collective disruption that requires collective moral reckoning if there is to be repair.

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The sky is falling: History, war, violence and retrieving humanity — Victoria Grieve-Williams

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 04:48:08 +0000

Warraimaay historian Victoria Grieve-Williams reflects on the necessity of attending to the history of war and violence, in order to understand what it is about human nature that creates such horror. We need to move beyond romanticism and silences to grapple with the true nature of war and also with the fact that conflicts and war are increasing. Those who have been into the abyss of war and survived are to be treasured for their understanding of ways to heal and ways to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

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Moral injury and moral repair: The possibilities of narrative practice — David Denborough

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 04:45:27 +0000

With a focus on the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan, this paper grapples with the suffering induced by war, and particularly with moral anguish. Following a critical analysis of development of the concepts of PTSD and moral injury, and the material effects these have on the lives of veterans, David Denborough offers a series of additional responses drawn from narrative therapy. These include the key concepts of ‘re-authoring’ stories of identity, externalising problems, honouring responses to trauma, considering distress as a marker of fidelity, re-membering those who have died, and moving beyond scripts about forgiveness. He also offers responses drawn from collective narrative practice that respond to veterans’ stories in ways that avoid both admiration and judgement, instead seeking to communalise grief and enable contribution. These include the exchange of witnessing letters and the Team of Life narrative approach. Denborough argues for a response to moral injury that is both moral and social. He highlights possibilities for linking ‘healing’ with social action: collective projects of moral repair that seek to redress the harm done to others, including the civilians of Afghanistan.

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My motherland, my heart: A collection of thoughts, feelings and emotions about Afghanistan, gathered from conversations with children of the Afghan diaspora — Fariba Ahmadi

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 04:28:38 +0000

This paper documents collective narrative practice with young Afghan people in Australia. The author met with a group of 12- to 14-year-olds and documented their responses to recent events in Afghanistan. The young people share how they have been affected, how they have been coping, where they are finding support and their advice for others. The author invited responses to the young people’s testimonies, and these are also included.

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Reflections on Adelite Mukamana’s ‘Ways of living and survival by children born out of rape during genocide’ — Ruth Pluznick

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 02:40:09 +0000

Ruth Pluznick reflects on Adelite Mukamana's article 'Ways of living and survival by children born out of rape during genocide' featured in this issue of the International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work.

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The Story Kitchen in Nepal: Igniting and building the courage for justice – a reponse to Adelite Mukamana — Jaya Luintel

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 02:34:55 +0000

This paper is a response to Adelite Mukamana’s (2021) paper ‘Ways of living and survival by children born out of rape during genocide’. It draws connections between Mukamana’s work in Rwanda and the work of The Story Kitchen in Nepal. In both these locations, narrative practitioners are applying the tools of collective narrative practice to ensure that women who have been subjected to sexual violence during armed conflict are not left with a single story or identity, to bring forth the hope in people’s experiences of survival, and to support a collective voice for justice.

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Ways of living and survival by children born out of rape during genocide — Adelite Mukamana

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 02:28:53 +0000

During the Rwandan genocide in 1994, rape was used systematically as a weapon of war and a means of genocide. Many children were born as a result. Now young adults, these children have faced significant stigma and ongoing hardships. Using a narrative framework developed for receiving and documenting testimonies of trauma, this paper presents the stories of five children born of rape following the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. It documents some of the ongoing effects of the genocide, the hardships these young people have faced, both within their families and in the broader society, how they have survived, and their hopes and commitments for the future.

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