Remembering as Praxis: Reconceptualizing Structural and State-sanctioned Violence, Oppression, and Trauma through Radical Survival Narrative Pedagogy

This study looks at women’s narratives as entry points to understanding the gendered and racialized nature of the experiences of violence, oppression, trauma, resistance, and survival, and their connections to patriarchal capitalist relations of imperialism and colonialism across national and cultural boundaries. The first section establishes the theoretical and epistemological framework of transnational feminist theory and Dialectical Historical Materialism, forming a praxis that posits the need to examine macro structures such as imperialism and colonialism, in ways that forefront the material realities of women’s lives and the historical, material conditions that have produced their experiences and stories. The second section presents a narrative analysis within this theoretical framework. The data include narratives by Indigenous survivors of Residential Schools in settler colonial Canada, testimonios of revolutionary struggle from Central America, and political prisoner memoirs from the Middle East. The analysis traces threads of violence, trauma, resistance, and survival which emphasize the connections between the personal and the political, and between private and public memory, and call us to consider how we may challenge, decolonize, and confront dominant ideologies and collective post-trauma/survival subjectivities and solidarities. From this analysis and a critique of mainstream conceptualizations of trauma and the concept of ‘trauma texts,’ I offer the concept of ‘radical survival narratives,’ informed by the narratives themselves, as well as by the concept of ‘radical vulnerability’ from Social Justice and Critical Disability Studies, and the Indigenous literary theory concept of ‘survivance.’ The third section is the development of an arts-based pedagogic framework for community-based and formal education settings. Through both its content and process, this pedagogy of the radical survival narratives is aimed at developing learners’ understanding of the social relations of colonialism and imperialism within patriarchal capitalism and reframing our understanding of violence and trauma through a pedagogy of these narratives. The pedagogy further highlights resistance and survival, pushing back against capitalist, colonialist, imperialist structures and agendas, and building strength and solidarity.

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