Canaries in the Mine
I also found the metaphor of people who have experienced violence as
like "canaries in the mine" useful for shifting from more
pathologized views to approaches that recognize no where is free of
violence, there is no safe place to retreat to and heal. Instead, it offers
the idea that those who have experienced violence are like the
canaries, offering a warning that the levels of violence in society are
toxic to us all. It is not they who must return to "normal" and
accept
future possibilities of violence, but society which must change and
reduce the ongoing possibility of violation, particularly for women
and children. The concept of living beside trauma, along with the idea
of survivors as canaries in the mine, shifts away from the demand to
act "normal" and get over it. This invites all survivors, whether
learners or teachers, to honour their experience of trauma and impacts
on the self, rather than seek to deny and hide them.
These new discourses also allow for an opening to tears and a
recognition of their value. In my group, I heard myself and others
often saying, "Don't cry." Checking this response to tears
with other
literacy workers I heard from several First Nations instructors that in
their traditions tears are to be valued as life-giving, and a means of
honouring the grief and those who are trusted to bear witness to the
grief. Other instructors were often aware that they, too, had sought to
quell tears in themselves and others. Although they were, on the one
hand wanting to recognize the value of tears, they, too, drew on the
well-worn phrase "don't cry," when seeking to offer a comforting
comment. Yet this comment denies the value of expressing feeling.
The concept of honouring traumatized parts of the self is consistent
with the Aboriginal tradition of valuing tears. Lewis explains what
this shift means to her:
Living beside means acknowledging the traumatized parts of
self as they arise in daily life. It means honouring them and
giving them space for expression. As soon as I resist and refuse
these parts of myself, I quickly move back into relationships
and a sense of self that reflect past patterns of survival. When I
honour the trauma, I gain the flexibility to move into different
parts of myself to create new possibilities. (Lewis, 1999:120)
Over to You....
- Do any of these discourses of violence sound familiar to you?
- Do you have examples of how they block or enable to take up
issues of violence in literacy?
- Do you hear other discourses that block or enable?
- Can you imagine new possibilities for discourses that would enable literacy
programs to take up issues of violence?
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