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| Carl Stauffer |
IMAGINING NEW NARRATIVES OUT OF HEALING
Deconstructing and Processing Systemic Violence
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| "Energetic Africa" (Yago) |
Carl: It is beyond the African culture too. Many indigenous cultures have elaborate processes of dance and music and ritual to mediate the difficulties in life. To give meaning and understanding, I think they are important forms of releasing the energy that is locked inside of a person. These rituals of dance and music are important for keeping the equilibrium in society. I couldn’t imagine better cultural ethos to do the work of trauma healing, justice and peacebuilding because of this ability to integrate ways in which people can release their anger, frustration and pain.
More specifically, music in South Africa played an invaluable role as an instrument in the liberation struggle. And then, I see this same function translated in the Church too. Why is it that the Pentecostal Church is growing so fast, so rapidly in the Global South and amongst the poorest of the poor? Okay, you could be cynical and say that part of it is this theological promise of the blessing of the future, of heaven’s streets of gold, and of wealth and prosperity here on earth. However, I also experienced this here in the USA amongst the urban poor. The Pentecostal movements were rapidly growing and these churches offered a place in which people could leave their trauma, worries, pain, and grief behind them. For a few hours a week all of the horror of the unnecessary deaths, criminal activity, loved ones being put behind bars, overwhelming substance abuse was laid to rest, even forgotten. All of this could be brought to the Church, and there was this release through song, dance, shouting, shaking, and going into a trance. Yes, all of this has to do with the body and the spirit movement, and the release. So I find even now, that’s why my wife and I choose to fellowship in an African-American Church. We have personally been part of African-American or African churches since 1988. I say we are spoiled for the ordinary, for us to worship it means an embodied experience, it cannot be a mental assent for us, that is not integrated enough for us. I understand for someone this may sound strange, they would say: “that’s extreme”, but for me it is an integrated process, so when I am worshiping I am using my body, mind and spirit/soul. For us, the issue is not whether everything makes sense or not, but whether what I am sensing or feeling, and what I am processing consciously or subconsciously as I worship is Spirit-led.
More specifically, music in South Africa played an invaluable role as an instrument in the liberation struggle. And then, I see this same function translated in the Church too. Why is it that the Pentecostal Church is growing so fast, so rapidly in the Global South and amongst the poorest of the poor? Okay, you could be cynical and say that part of it is this theological promise of the blessing of the future, of heaven’s streets of gold, and of wealth and prosperity here on earth. However, I also experienced this here in the USA amongst the urban poor. The Pentecostal movements were rapidly growing and these churches offered a place in which people could leave their trauma, worries, pain, and grief behind them. For a few hours a week all of the horror of the unnecessary deaths, criminal activity, loved ones being put behind bars, overwhelming substance abuse was laid to rest, even forgotten. All of this could be brought to the Church, and there was this release through song, dance, shouting, shaking, and going into a trance. Yes, all of this has to do with the body and the spirit movement, and the release. So I find even now, that’s why my wife and I choose to fellowship in an African-American Church. We have personally been part of African-American or African churches since 1988. I say we are spoiled for the ordinary, for us to worship it means an embodied experience, it cannot be a mental assent for us, that is not integrated enough for us. I understand for someone this may sound strange, they would say: “that’s extreme”, but for me it is an integrated process, so when I am worshiping I am using my body, mind and spirit/soul. For us, the issue is not whether everything makes sense or not, but whether what I am sensing or feeling, and what I am processing consciously or subconsciously as I worship is Spirit-led.
Carl: I think I should start by being
clear on my ideological bias at this point (I draw from critical theory
substantially), which was greatly influenced by my time in South Africa. So, I
have to start with the origins of all the modern-day institutions/ structures
which we struggle with so much in the present, whether that be in the form of
government, military, justice, education, religion, media or economic systems.
At the root of all this is how we understand colonial history. What were the
energies that drove colonialism? And how did the outward trappings of
colonialism become coverings for internal expressions of a much deeper process?
I am fully aware that these are highly contested arenas of thought and feeling.
I’m not only applying critical thinking to the European enlightenment era.
There were many important evolutionary discoveries, scientifically about health
and many things, about art. So it would be naïve to write off Euro-centric
enlightenment as something only wrong or dark.
On the other hand, one has to
look at the philosophical and spiritual roots of the scientific/modernist
enlightenment movements and what were the motivations and impulses. I have less
positive feel for that, because the impulse was that rank had become quite
important in the understanding of world. And Europe was at the top of the
ranking order, and the rest of the world was at the bottom of that ranking
system, and we were ‘right’ intellectually, spiritually, physically, in many
ways ‘advancement’ was discerned or defined by this motivation of one culture,
or a particular group of cultures – the European cultures. It was not just one
culture, but the sort of white male of the 1700-1800s was dominating much of
the socio-economic thinking and political institution building and at that
point it was a climax for the white European male, he was on top of all things
in his known world. At that time, there were grave power dynamics at play that
had no checks and balances - there was destructive greed, a sense of moral and
intellectual superiority, which to me become the philosophical and spiritual
roots that drove the modernist enlightenment process. And speaking as a white
male with privilege, we are still trying to figure out how to get rid of the
dread of those legacies; the sludge that we have carried with us because of
that history. It is taking a lot of undoing, and will continue to need a lot of
unpacking.
On the other hand, one has to
look at the philosophical and spiritual roots of the scientific/modernist
enlightenment movements and what were the motivations and impulses. I have less
positive feel for that, because the impulse was that rank had become quite
important in the understanding of world. And Europe was at the top of the
ranking order, and the rest of the world was at the bottom of that ranking
system, and we were ‘right’ intellectually, spiritually, physically, in many
ways ‘advancement’ was discerned or defined by this motivation of one culture,
or a particular group of cultures – the European cultures. It was not just one
culture, but the sort of white male of the 1700-1800s was dominating much of
the socio-economic thinking and political institution building and at that
point it was a climax for the white European male, he was on top of all things
in his known world. At that time, there were grave power dynamics at play that
had no checks and balances - there was destructive greed, a sense of moral and
intellectual superiority, which to me become the philosophical and spiritual
roots that drove the modernist enlightenment process. And speaking as a white
male with privilege, we are still trying to figure out how to get rid of the
dread of those legacies; the sludge that we have carried with us because of
that history. It is taking a lot of undoing, and will continue to need a lot of
unpacking.
Yago: As you are mentioning, we are
struggling how to get rid of that feeling of superiority. This “colonial
energy” is very much subconscious and behaves in very subtle ways. As we know,
the abolishment of slavery in America didn’t stop racism in this country. It
took many decades for the real emancipation of the African-American. Energies of
enslavement do not disappear at once. It often takes many years of
deconstruction, processing and forgiveness.
Carl: For us here in the United
States, I think there’s nothing more clear than the way we’ve treated the
history of the enslavement of African peoples as well as, before that even, the
genocide of the people who inhabited this land before the white European came.
By the very fact that we have refused to publicly acknowledge these historical
harms, particularly the genocide of the indigenous native peoples, these
historical wounds have become foundational to the corporate identity of this
nation. We have tried to rewrite our history and make it nicer, kindler,
gentler, but we cannot. That energy remains until we surface it and begin to
collectively and publicly work with it.
The same with slavery, the energy surrounding race relationships, even until today carries the aftermath of slavery. Even though yesterday we inaugurated our first African American president for his second term, a very historic moment, that process on its own has not erased a deep-seated legacy of structural racism that we’re still working with. It’s deep-seated in many of the public institutions that we have come to take for granted, and have not looked at carefully because they have existed for decades and centuries.
The same with slavery, the energy surrounding race relationships, even until today carries the aftermath of slavery. Even though yesterday we inaugurated our first African American president for his second term, a very historic moment, that process on its own has not erased a deep-seated legacy of structural racism that we’re still working with. It’s deep-seated in many of the public institutions that we have come to take for granted, and have not looked at carefully because they have existed for decades and centuries.
Yago: Let us go in depth into that. As
a whole, American society is living from the surface, not acknowledging its
past in its whole truth. America is not dealing with its collective
unconscious; America is not processing its life history as a Nation; America is
not lamenting; America is projecting to the world its unresolved issues being
controlled and dominated by unprocessed energies. Would you agree with this?
Carl: I am fully aware of my privilege
as an American, and I love to live here, it’s a beautiful place, and I live in
a place here in Harrisonburg where it’s calm and peaceful. It’s an amazing
place and there are multiple things I’m thankful for that I have been blessed
with. I don’t want to sound like I don’t have any grateful acknowledgment for
the good things of this country.
On the other hand, it does us no good to simply whitewash over that history and pretend it wasn’t there - and continue to convince ourselves, and each subsequent generation of a patriotic history that simply isn’t giving the authentic story. Because of the violence of such things as the mass killing of indigenous people, and not dealing with that, the foundations of our nation have been built on violence - like many other modern nations. So therefore, the institutions we have grown to love have many good things about them, many positive things that democracy and freedom have allowed, and yet, I don’t care how prominent, successful and powerful a democracy is, if it is built on violence, then that violence seeps into the institutional mindset and framework. And so you have almost a violence DNA, which infiltrates into the socio-political and religious structures of society.
So for instance,
Michelle Alexander, an African American lawyer, just published a book here on
what she calls the “New Jim Crow.” The Jim Crow was the era of post slavery but
pre civil rights, where the African American was supposedly ‘free’, but not
free to live amongst the dominant white public. They were still in extensive
segregation. Those were called the Jim Crow laws and they separated the black
and the white. The caricature of the black American became a form of
entertainment for the white, the black person’s music and dance were something
to enjoy, but to give them freedom, to give their children equal opportunity,
was not on the table. The Jim Crow era was a time of social and legal
restrictions for people of color in the USA, and these conditions made it ripe
for the civil rights movement to gain momentum.
On the other hand, it does us no good to simply whitewash over that history and pretend it wasn’t there - and continue to convince ourselves, and each subsequent generation of a patriotic history that simply isn’t giving the authentic story. Because of the violence of such things as the mass killing of indigenous people, and not dealing with that, the foundations of our nation have been built on violence - like many other modern nations. So therefore, the institutions we have grown to love have many good things about them, many positive things that democracy and freedom have allowed, and yet, I don’t care how prominent, successful and powerful a democracy is, if it is built on violence, then that violence seeps into the institutional mindset and framework. And so you have almost a violence DNA, which infiltrates into the socio-political and religious structures of society.
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| Michelle Alexander |
Yago: You were sixteen years in Africa, could you give us an example of how unprocessed systemic violence keeps perpetuating itself in the African continent?
Carl: I can give you an example from South Africa.
People lament South Africa because of the high level of criminal violence that
we’ve experienced since Mandela’s release and the ANC (majority represented
government) has come to power. There are many attempts to explain it. Some say,
we did not have the correct statistics during Apartheid, and now we finally do
have the correct statistics. Some say, no, those who are affected, the victims
of crime, blame the government. The whites blame it on the blacks. The blacks
blame it on the whites. All of these are possibilities, none of them are
enough; each explanation on its own is too simple. Violence is very complex,
for me, the only way to understand South Africa is to go back at least 300
years. We begin to understand that we have cycles of bloodshed in our history.
To use a biblical metaphor, the ‘blood cries out from the ground’, when God’s spirit
came to Cain and asked, where is your brother? And Cain replied, am I my
brother’s keeper? And God said, the blood of your brother cries out from the
ground. That to me is both poetic, but also about how the DNA of violence gets
transmitted from one generation to the next. It gets reconstructed in our
institutions and in our societal narrative so that we can start to live by this
transmission of attitude and belief system. And then we find ourselves still
living with the legacies of our past – a modern enslavement of ourselves.
We have to look at layers of violence, like from King Shaka Zulu who originally came from the Congo (Central Africa) region, before the colonizers were on the continent, but he was a colonizer within the Continent, because he had a sophisticated military. He either killed (through mass slaughter) any people groups that would not join him, or he would force them to assimilate. That’s how he built his kingdom and then he moved to modern day South Africa. Now we have violence amongst the African ethnic groups, and that plays out even today with squabbles over which African ethnic group dominates the political leadership of the country or grave stereotypes and prejudices among and between the 9 distinct African ethnic groups that inhabit South Africa.
We have to look at layers of violence, like from King Shaka Zulu who originally came from the Congo (Central Africa) region, before the colonizers were on the continent, but he was a colonizer within the Continent, because he had a sophisticated military. He either killed (through mass slaughter) any people groups that would not join him, or he would force them to assimilate. That’s how he built his kingdom and then he moved to modern day South Africa. Now we have violence amongst the African ethnic groups, and that plays out even today with squabbles over which African ethnic group dominates the political leadership of the country or grave stereotypes and prejudices among and between the 9 distinct African ethnic groups that inhabit South Africa.
The British and the Afrikaner had great hatred toward
each other, and there was actually an all-out war between them in 1900 called
the Anglo-Boer War. In fact, 27,000 Afrikaner women and children died in British
concentration camps as part of that war. For the first 50 years after the war,
there was such animosity between the English and Afrikaners that they would not
even marry each other or send their children to the same schools much less live
together. And then there was Apartheid, and we all know about the torture and
the violence. Beyond just the violence to the physical body, we also have to
keep in mind the emotional, spiritual, identity and cultural trauma. Where
people were forced out of their homes and forced to live in certain areas and
forced to only get a certain amount of education, forced to have a certain kind
of job. This destroys human dignity. So, I’m recounting all of this to say that
I believe that these are the strands of what I see as below the surface of the
criminal violence being experienced right now in South Africa. And to say that
we could somehow erase that would be naïve. We’re not going to be able to do
that until we grapple with and understand the depth of our narrative histories
and lived experiences from the past.
Yago: As you talk, it comes to my mind
the importance of new historicism. Being born and brought up in Spain, I have experienced a collective denial as far as acknowledging the historical harms done to indigenous peoples in America and elsewhere. We have never been invited to lament for all the harm done along history. One of the ways that the system of violence perpetuates itself is
through the denial of history, choosing a fictitious narrative where the
oppressed is not present. Could you share with us what is meant by new
historicism?
Carl: New historicism is a critical
postmodern ‘turn’ that is applying critical theory to our understanding of
history. And critical theory says we don’t just ask questions about the content
of what is being said, we ask about authorship? Who is writing it? We ask about
context, we ask about motive, it is stripping the modernist science of
historicism, which has claimed for eons that we can record history factually
and scientifically, in detailed annals or lists of events. These historical
‘facts’ are somehow devoid (which is another scientific left-over) of any kind
of subjectivity, that they are completely objective. When New Historicism began
to ask the hard questions about who has been writing our history, and again,
this takes me back to the white, European male, they were the ones writing
history for hundreds of years. They were the ones interpreting history through
the eyes of generals, military heroes, and the economic and political elite.
And the voice of the common person on the ground, unless they were trained to
write history (and by then they probably already joined another class of
society) their voice was not being heard, unless it was passed along poorly or
through music, and it was usually left in the underground - until such a time
that the new historicism movement began to surface. And so, there was this
practical deconstruction of history as we know it, by using literary criticism,
which asks these questions of author, and intent and voice. There’s also the
symbolic side of that which says that our work is to find platforms and public
space for the voice of the silenced and the marginalized to come out and speak.
Sometimes it’s almost hard to find that voice, because it has been so long!
Forced assimilation has taken its toll. One of the reasons why it is very hard
to find that voice here for the indigenous people of this country is not only
because so many of them were wiped out, but so many of them were forcibly
assimilated into our society, they no longer know their cultures or their
roots, for generations. So their numbers have become so small, in the scheme of
the large number of the population of the country, and they have lost voice.
And the voice of the common person on the ground, unless they were trained to
write history (and by then they probably already joined another class of
society) their voice was not being heard, unless it was passed along poorly or
through music, and it was usually left in the underground - until such a time
that the new historicism movement began to surface. And so, there was this
practical deconstruction of history as we know it, by using literary criticism,
which asks these questions of author, and intent and voice. There’s also the
symbolic side of that which says that our work is to find platforms and public
space for the voice of the silenced and the marginalized to come out and speak.
Sometimes it’s almost hard to find that voice, because it has been so long!
Forced assimilation has taken its toll. One of the reasons why it is very hard
to find that voice here for the indigenous people of this country is not only
because so many of them were wiped out, but so many of them were forcibly
assimilated into our society, they no longer know their cultures or their
roots, for generations. So their numbers have become so small, in the scheme of
the large number of the population of the country, and they have lost voice.
Yago: Do you know any attempt to
recover the real history of ethnic groups before colonization? Do you have any
example from the African Continent?
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| Herero chained during the 1904 rebellion (source:wikipedia) |
Yago: What you are saying is of
extreme importance. If we don’t remember it becomes extremely difficult to
deconstruct the energies of enslavement that we carry. It is crucial to
remember, if we want to acknowledge the pain, if we want to restore history and
to take responsibility, if we want forgiveness to happen.
Carl: In fact, it was out of that
conference, or simultaneously, there was a movement to ask the then German
prime minister, to publicly acknowledge this chapter in German history, which
she did. It was a very symbolic move the German government to say, “We
establish this as another element of the truth of what really happened and we
are sorry.”
Yago: Does the writing of new history
go together with the creation of new narratives? Is new history written through
new narratives?
Carl: For sure – a new historicism
project should always be tied to rewriting the public narrative of a nation.
And the beauty of it is that it is not only the public narrative, but also the
personal narrative, because they are so closely related. So, when the
individual victims who have suffered so severely under violent systems are
given public voice, and given a public place to lament, you are rebuilding
their narrative individually, as a family and a clan, and it builds into a
spiral on a community, national, and regional level.
There’s this tremendously powerful interplay between the collective and the individual in the narrative building process. It’s exponential. It’s much bigger than the sum of its parts. The meta-narrative, or the dominant narrative is not just all of the small stories that have multiplied over time. It is the subconscious of the nation that is built on the deep, sometimes unspoken societal mores, norms, values and structures that we construct from our sense of victimization, identity, violence, and aggression. What is desperately needed in this case is a retelling of the story in a moment of deconstruction. Retelling the story invokes the need to reconfigure relationships, networks and reconstruct the socio-political institutions that guide us so that a new society can emerge. In the direction of what we call durable peace.
There’s this tremendously powerful interplay between the collective and the individual in the narrative building process. It’s exponential. It’s much bigger than the sum of its parts. The meta-narrative, or the dominant narrative is not just all of the small stories that have multiplied over time. It is the subconscious of the nation that is built on the deep, sometimes unspoken societal mores, norms, values and structures that we construct from our sense of victimization, identity, violence, and aggression. What is desperately needed in this case is a retelling of the story in a moment of deconstruction. Retelling the story invokes the need to reconfigure relationships, networks and reconstruct the socio-political institutions that guide us so that a new society can emerge. In the direction of what we call durable peace.
Yago: In order to meaningfully
accompany this process of deconstruction and reconstruction of history it
requires from us to be reflective practitioners. Very often we are not just
objective witnesses of the process. Deep within we share a collective history
of oppression and liberation. We must be very much aware. Deconstruction and
reconstruction happens in our personal histories as practitioners as well.
Carl: Very much so, and this is why
especially if we’re moving and working across cultures, (and in this global age
we are doing this all the time), we are working with people who are trying to
deconstruct multiple histories of conflict and violence. This requires us to do
extensive analysis: preparation, interviewing, reading, understanding so that
we in fact can carry some of their stories as we go into any given location.
Because if that story, narrative or history is not invited into the intervention,
our work is shallow, very surface oriented. This is why we see so many aborted
peacebuilding processes.
To negotiate the rebuilding of a nation without taking into consideration the mythical-histories and the social narratives, and the political-economic discourses, all of the narratives, it is almost a waste of time. We need the cease-fire of guns; we need to stop the killing; that’s really important. But to assume that a negotiated agreement that ushers in a new configuration of politicians and possibly some new institutions is enough is simply another relic of the modernist exercise of diplomacy. The idea that if we adjust some government structures and physical change leaders, somehow we can start anew, is preposterous. There’s too much of a deep psychology and an emotional and spiritual dynamic of this transformation at an individual and collective level that we have to start to carry these constructed narratives with us. And carry them, not as a burden of trauma, but as a way of knowing. I think if we carry these narratives, even if they are hidden, seemingly to the people around us, we’re going to hear the voices of pain and perpetration in a different way. We’re going to hear what people are saying in a deeper way because we have a ‘thickened’ layered backdrop: A new spiritual, emotional, physiological worldview that we are embracing and it is inside of us. So we’re going to hear with new ears. We’re going to see with new eyes the undercurrents, the impulses that are not obvious in the surface ruptures of the conflict, and in this way we become more effective and shall I say intuitive in what we’re trying to do.
To negotiate the rebuilding of a nation without taking into consideration the mythical-histories and the social narratives, and the political-economic discourses, all of the narratives, it is almost a waste of time. We need the cease-fire of guns; we need to stop the killing; that’s really important. But to assume that a negotiated agreement that ushers in a new configuration of politicians and possibly some new institutions is enough is simply another relic of the modernist exercise of diplomacy. The idea that if we adjust some government structures and physical change leaders, somehow we can start anew, is preposterous. There’s too much of a deep psychology and an emotional and spiritual dynamic of this transformation at an individual and collective level that we have to start to carry these constructed narratives with us. And carry them, not as a burden of trauma, but as a way of knowing. I think if we carry these narratives, even if they are hidden, seemingly to the people around us, we’re going to hear the voices of pain and perpetration in a different way. We’re going to hear what people are saying in a deeper way because we have a ‘thickened’ layered backdrop: A new spiritual, emotional, physiological worldview that we are embracing and it is inside of us. So we’re going to hear with new ears. We’re going to see with new eyes the undercurrents, the impulses that are not obvious in the surface ruptures of the conflict, and in this way we become more effective and shall I say intuitive in what we’re trying to do.
I believe that narratives must be constructed from
deep within (spirituality) weaving them with diverse fields of knowledge. We
are invited to go beyond a rigid specialization on the peacebuilding field.
Meaningful interaction between disciplines is essential for a wise and holistic
approach to peacebuilding. During the last spring semester we had a new course at CJP called “Transforming Trauma: Individual and Collective Approaches”. We explored
trauma from the Counseling and Conflict Transformation fields. It has been a
very enriching experience. Could you share with us the new areas of innovation
present in the educational system of CJP?
Carl: Yes, there are a number of parts
to that question. Most recently, our university has begun talking about
integrating its practices and academics across undergrad and graduate, and
then, amongst the graduate schools. In the past, our educational system was
built on difference, and so our disciplines were focused on niche identities
and becoming more and more refined, differentiated and separate. Our modernist
education insisted that a pure psychologist must be able to precisely define
the distinctive of psychology from the other sciences, or from religion or
theology. Now, these compartments and categories are falling away. They must
fall away. It is a form of violence through education. It causes competition in
a sense because we have to fight over scarce resources. As opposed to seeing
this learning environment as interdisciplinary, and that our disciplines
cross-pollinate each other. Thankfully, peacebuilding has always been
interdisciplinary in nature, because it is a new field, we have drawn from
others, but we have not always had the openness to collaborate as freely as we
are now.
So we have new promising partnerships forging with our graduate colleagues in theology, counseling, and education. It is my hope that we will grow to understand that neurobiology is deeply important for peacebuilding as much as it is for biomedicine to prepare to be a doctor or nurse or a medical professional. Recent neuroscience research is introducing a new way of being and doing and living. As you said, we think into what we are. Our narratives are what we live-in, we act on, and we love with. And so, I find this cross-pollination, this integration, this working together, collaborating across disciplines very important, quite refreshing and the way of the future.
The strength of CJP will be not to generalize our study, but to delve into the
intellectual undercurrents flowing from this multi-disciplinary conversation,
and at the same time remain broad in our understanding in how these various
fields are intricately connected. We can profoundly learn from each other.
Therefore, we must be in cooperation. For instance, CJP has modeled this by
leading the field in the integration of trauma and peacebuilding since the
early 1990s. In contrast, many of our peer organizations would separate these
disciplines out and trauma healing work would be under psychology, counseling
or mental health. I think the examples of how this is happening on a global
scene, and not just locally, are found in the rise of structures like truth and
reconciliation commissions. Because in essence, a truth and reconciliation
commission is acknowledging that trauma is part of peacebuilding and
reconstruction, and therefore we have to hear the victims and we have to bring
in the psychological and mental health and trauma components of our existence
into our discussion; and it actually informs justice. It informs peacebuilding,
it informs nonviolence. It informs the kinds of transitional institutions,
instruments that we build and use to try to transform society. So we are seeing
a rise in global consciousness on the importance of peace in a much more
philosophical, cohesive and holistic way.
So we have new promising partnerships forging with our graduate colleagues in theology, counseling, and education. It is my hope that we will grow to understand that neurobiology is deeply important for peacebuilding as much as it is for biomedicine to prepare to be a doctor or nurse or a medical professional. Recent neuroscience research is introducing a new way of being and doing and living. As you said, we think into what we are. Our narratives are what we live-in, we act on, and we love with. And so, I find this cross-pollination, this integration, this working together, collaborating across disciplines very important, quite refreshing and the way of the future.
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| CJP logo |
Yago: Attachment theory lens allows us
to have access and understand the very core and origin of a conflict. It is an
invitation to the below of the conflict where we begin to deal with issues of
dignity. Could you share with us on the importance of the below (feeling,
emotions, body awareness) in situations of conflict?
Carl: The evolution of attachment
theory is a case study on its own, of moving from the modernist, scientific,
categorization of limitations, to a much more holistic perspective. Because its
origins were strictly around parent-child relationship and much of the research
was confined to analysis within the family unit. Now, as its grown, we are
beginning to understand that attachment theory applies to all relationships. We
are beginning to understand child soldiers and traumatic bonding to the
commander. Why a child soldier who might be captured at age 7, and forced to
engage in traumatic killing of maybe their own family, find themselves deeply
connected to this commander who ordered them to kill. What we know from
attachment theory and child psychology, development theory, that by age 7 a
child is only beginning to individuate from their caregiver. So if they are
caught early on, before that differentiation has happened, they cannot even
make a distinction between the commander as the caregiver who gives them food
and clothing and protects them, and their parent. No matter how twisted this
kind of protection may seem, the commander ultimately fills the need for a
parent role or function in a very distorted, violent system. This gives us
fresh insight into the child soldier.
If you recall, in class, Annmarie Early talked about the spiral, first the child protests when they don’t get the caregiver’s attention, then they cling, then they get depressed, or they become quiet, and then they detach. This is very applicable to a child soldier. So, they protest, they can only protest for so long, because if they protest too much, they get killed. And they are killed in front of the others. And the commander says, “If you behave like this, you will die next.” And so their protest does not work. They cling, but the commander in the violent system will never allow you to cling. The child soldier will always be pushed to fight, to destroy, to separate, to pillage, and to become a killing machine, so to speak. We know that they drug these young boys in many situations, too, because that’s the only way they can get them to fight – to sear their conscious. Then they become deeply depressed. Many of them talk about almost feeling numb – both the drugs numb their minds – but also the trauma of the violence, and so they walk in sort of a foggy cloud. And so when they’re freed, when the war is over, when they may be able to escape, by then, their only way of survival, has been to completely detach themselves. And this is where the media or the community can say this person has become less than human - like an animal. Well, they have become detached from human existence and dignity as a matter of survival, and they have lost touch with what it means to have meaningful relationships. So the trauma healing and reintegration of the child soldier back into society becomes an extremely difficult task because of these dynamics.
If you recall, in class, Annmarie Early talked about the spiral, first the child protests when they don’t get the caregiver’s attention, then they cling, then they get depressed, or they become quiet, and then they detach. This is very applicable to a child soldier. So, they protest, they can only protest for so long, because if they protest too much, they get killed. And they are killed in front of the others. And the commander says, “If you behave like this, you will die next.” And so their protest does not work. They cling, but the commander in the violent system will never allow you to cling. The child soldier will always be pushed to fight, to destroy, to separate, to pillage, and to become a killing machine, so to speak. We know that they drug these young boys in many situations, too, because that’s the only way they can get them to fight – to sear their conscious. Then they become deeply depressed. Many of them talk about almost feeling numb – both the drugs numb their minds – but also the trauma of the violence, and so they walk in sort of a foggy cloud. And so when they’re freed, when the war is over, when they may be able to escape, by then, their only way of survival, has been to completely detach themselves. And this is where the media or the community can say this person has become less than human - like an animal. Well, they have become detached from human existence and dignity as a matter of survival, and they have lost touch with what it means to have meaningful relationships. So the trauma healing and reintegration of the child soldier back into society becomes an extremely difficult task because of these dynamics.
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| by Sarah Hollick |
Yago: So, attachment theory becomes a
guideline to understand how a person engages in violent behavior and what can
be done to restore that person to a dignified life again.
Carl: Absolutely! So, one of the first
things that they recommend for child soldiers, other than intensive trauma
healing work, is to place them in family again. If their own family is
nonexistent, they are placed in other families. The immediate priority is
getting them back into school where they have to relate to peers and
integrating them back into regular human routines of sleeping, eating, working,
socializing, etc. And then beginning to work with trust of others, and the
ability to reimagine themselves as human once again. All this is dependent on
whether or not they can even remember what it was like to be a dignified person
– located in a web of community relations, how you behave, how you expect to be
treated, how you treat others.
Yago: Attachment theory also gives us
insights about the quality of service offered by the practitioner. The
practitioner very often has gone from a process of moving from victim, to
survivor, to wounded healer.
Carl: That is a nice progression,
victim to survivor to wounded healer. Unfortunately as practitioners we have
the other side, we can move from victim to aggressor to wounded offender. And
we can also have practitioners who stay in the victim mode. Some of us are
doing a lot of damage in the name of peace.
Carl: Yes, if we are not aware of our
own ‘unfinished business’ that we bring into the situation, we may reinforce
the trauma of others. Sometimes we can become trauma enablers meaning we are
always rescuing the traumatized person and thereby denying them the experience
of actually regulating their own responses to pain and difficulty. We may
internalize the anger, the aggression of others – a kind of vicarious trauma –
and end up more angry than the victim themselves. We may become helpless and
feel that there is nothing we can do, because of our own secondary trauma, and
the trauma of the other has made us feel helpless. We may feel the need to
manage, to control or make decisions for the recovery of the traumatized
person. These are all dangerous ways to help, they are not useful, and can
cause codependency that can make our peacebuilding work ineffective. So, we
have to work with our own story and always be prepared to name/identify our own
vulnerabilities.
Yago: In the system of violence we can
say that both the oppressor and the oppressed are suffering. Although in a
different way, both are losing their dignity and their identity is terribly
deformed. What can you say on this regard?
 |
| W.E. DuBois |
And for the people being oppressed, we certainly
understand their identity is being stripped from them in a public, material,
physical, and social way. It can be seen that their dignity is being destroyed
on the outside. But also, we know it’s doing a deep devastation on the inside.
And the social narratives are not only formulated by the oppressors to be used
against them, but they as victims have internalized those social, political,
economic narratives in a self-defeating downward spiral. They have devastated
their own identity, or suppressed it or pushed it down, because they’ve been
told there’s no place for their voice, there’s no place for them to speak back
to the dominant narrative. Their narrative is silenced both in the public
domain, and also in the private realm when they have succumbed, and there is
seemingly no more fight inside. We call this “learned helplessness,” or the
sense of internalized oppression, where you turn the oppression on yourself, or
your loved ones.
Yago: We need a strong imagination so
to be able to place ourselves into the shoes of our enemy. At the same time, you
are inviting us to use our imagination and creativity to understand the subtle
mechanisms in which a system of violence operates. But, systemic violence aims
at the suppression of the imagination, to reduce our power to imagine to
nothing, here the persecutor and the victim are affected.
Carl: The question then is: how and
where do we let that imagination come out? In some ways the oppressor has to be
extremely imaginative, because they are imagining the world they want, even if
that involves oppressing other people who they perceive as a threat. And so
they are constructing their world also, in other words, my PhD work was looking
at the violence narrative of the oppressor and they’re ability to build their
world by their narrative of oppression and the institutions of violence they
build up around them. And they are highly imaginative. This is why dictators
and despots stay in power for as long as they do.
Yago: In a previous interview in this
blog Lisa Schirch agrees with you saying that there is no one who knows better
about rituals as the oppressors themselves.
I’m convinced that our peacebuilding work, in
reconciliation and justice, is an art. It’s an art form; it takes the whole
body, mind and spirit. It takes all of our creative energy as the practitioner
to not only imagine a different world, but to form a different set of
relationships, and to take action in order to live into that. So you have to
become like a child and allow your fantasy and your imagination to say, ‘yes,
we could behave like this.’ You have to dispel the drive to be mastered by
realism alone. But you can only do that if you feel free and your identity is
restored enough that you have the leisure to do that. So this is where I
believe that even in the worst of circumstances, we know of people who have
been imprisoned and tortured who, through the spiritual strength that they
have, been able to overcome and keep their imagination alive.
Nelson Mandela is
an example here. He kept his imagination alive for twenty-seven years in
prison! So we know the human body is resilient, the human mind, and the spirit,
and it can overcome many of these obstacles. Our first task, then, when we
cannot conjure up any creativity, is to build up the identity, and the trust,
and the safe-space for the oppressed to work with their trauma. Imagination to
see a different world grows out of the place of healing. Which is what Paulo
Freire was trying to say in “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” and Augusto Boal
said in “The Theatre of the Oppressed,” helping the oppressed, the poor to
imagine another world using a different medium.
 |
| Nelson Mandela |
Let’s take the uprising in Tunisia and Egypt and the
young people at the forefront of that drama on the global stage – it was a
collision of ideology and identity. My analysis of these uprisings is that the
youth that were leading those movements were doing this out of their need to
reclaim an identity that they could be proud of, a sense of needing to empower
themselves to receive the recognition that they believed they deserved. And
there were also realistic needs for jobs, and services, and good governance,
and they made their demands clear. But they were exerting their dignity, if
nothing else, as the young people, the future leaders. And you see, in both
Tunisia and Egypt and other cases, the older generation, the ideologues took
over the movement, and this is causing a huge conflict now. This is why it’s
such a jagged process.
So not long ago, the young people were back on the
streets in Egypt, and back into the Tahrir Square and were saying, “This
revolution was hijacked!” - by their own elders, I mean, the country voted the
Muslim Brotherhood in. But they’re saying, “this is an ideology we didn’t ask
for – there’s a package coming with this of the way they govern, and
institutionally, and everything that we didn’t actually ask for. We wanted
something different. Not that we were opposed to a political party, but we must
say no to this package in its fullest form.” So it’s a colliding time now.
 |
| Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Getty Images |
But when you talk about the broader issue of power,
and as I said, power is everywhere, it’s accessible to all of us. It is a liberating
thought that is hard to keep reminding ourselves of, because the media and
society continue to tell us and they present images to us of power in certain
places, and in certain people, and on certain faces.
So, when we talk about the powers of government, we see the White House, and we see certain representatives in Washington, D.C., and President Obama, etc. But this is very disempowering, actually. And again, I would maintain that it’s a relic of the old era when the Colonial elite ruled, or the Feudal elite in Europe ruled, and needed to stay in power. This was in the times of kings, and kingdoms, and those types of princely hierarchical rules, and they had to stay in power by subjugating. And while we don’t subjugate in the same obvious way maybe as we did in the past, we are subjugated through media and the messages we tell, and the way in which we restrict power, and define power as coming through the gun, or through the military, or through the Congress, or through the President’s Office, or through the mayor. And we lose track on a day-to-day basis, the everyday person, and especially the poor and the oppressed, on a daily basis, because of the daily grind of just living and keeping the cycles of life going they forget. And they have to remind themselves of the powers at their disposal.
Gandhi, and Gandhi’s movement, Satyagraha, is probably the best
evidence on a large scale of the fact that not only did Gandhi articulate a
vision that caught the imagination of the masses, but it was the poor and the
oppressed masses. He not only caught their imagination, he somehow instilled a
sense that the power actually resides with them, and not the British colonial
power. And so, there are two dangerous things in life. The one is when you have
great power, and you pretend you don’t. And the other is when you are so
oppressed or downtrodden that you believe you don’t have any power at all. Both
of those are deadly deceptive states. And I think deliberative democracy
(whatever democracy means) where we as the people develop social contracts as
to how we want to live. This political process is much more authentic, and much
more sustainable, durable, and powerful when we all feel like we have access to
participatory decision-making power of some kind. And if it’s not only in our
own self, it’s outside of us. And if it’s not by us alone, it’s with others.
And so when we talk about nonviolence, of course, the language has to change
then. Right now power is associated with power-over, almost all the time. Who
has power over whom?
So, when we talk about the powers of government, we see the White House, and we see certain representatives in Washington, D.C., and President Obama, etc. But this is very disempowering, actually. And again, I would maintain that it’s a relic of the old era when the Colonial elite ruled, or the Feudal elite in Europe ruled, and needed to stay in power. This was in the times of kings, and kingdoms, and those types of princely hierarchical rules, and they had to stay in power by subjugating. And while we don’t subjugate in the same obvious way maybe as we did in the past, we are subjugated through media and the messages we tell, and the way in which we restrict power, and define power as coming through the gun, or through the military, or through the Congress, or through the President’s Office, or through the mayor. And we lose track on a day-to-day basis, the everyday person, and especially the poor and the oppressed, on a daily basis, because of the daily grind of just living and keeping the cycles of life going they forget. And they have to remind themselves of the powers at their disposal.
 |
| Gandhi |
Carl: Exactly. And so the language
changes to, “I share power with you” or “I give power to you, and you give
power to me. And we share power” or there are ways in which we can discuss how
power works. Back to your comment about the Kingdom, I often say to church
leaders that we have gotten very confused about the language of the kingdom.
Well, and we can trace that back to the King James Version, and you know, King
James had some political agenda in the version that he used, and the language
he used, and so on. And the Kingdom metaphors have become the prominent
metaphors when there are so many more metaphors in the Bible. God is spoken
about as a hen, a mother hen, covering her chicks, a gardener, the vineyard
owner, a Counselor, a Comforter, a well-watered garden, a spring, a cistern
that’s full – so many other analogies instead of King, Governor, Prophet-King
and Priest. You know? These are the analyses that have become totalizing. And
the other thing, in our institutionalized Church, today, I’ve walked into too
many churches with such extreme hierarchy that I’ve said it doesn’t feel like
an upside-down Kingdom.
There’s a popular book by Donald Kraybill, The Upside-Down Kingdom. Where he talks about Jesus turning all of these
power structures upside-down. In some churches I cannot differentiate between
the Kingdom in this Church and the kingdom in this world. It looks the same to
me, the hierarchy looks the same to me, there is a man at the top doing
whatever he wants to do with no accountability, I can’t see where the
difference is, the line is very blurred. Our church communities are an
expression, I believe, of how our corporate lives should look different when it
comes to power. When we re-arrange that power we release the imagination too,
the hierarchy structures refuse to release the imagination. It is not only the
west that has had hierarchy. I think that I have mentioned this before. When I
was in North-East Asia, particularly in ancient Chinese cultures, there is also
a great deal of hierarchy in society, you slotted it and you fit in one place,
and that also does not allow imagination, it tells you by your social standing
and by the social construction around you, this is your frame of reference,
these are your boundaries of thinking, and to think out of that is to step out
of the God-ordained natural birth right or your ranking place in Society. The
Church has always challenged this. This is what the Apostle Paul is speaking to
the Greeks of his day. The Greeks believed that you were born into a certain
lot, you were born a servant, a woman, a child and then you had a certain
position for life in society (a form of fatalism). So when Paul said there is
no Greek or Jew, nor male or female, slave or free, that was a very radical
statement for the Greek culture. He was saying that in the body of Christ, when
we participate in the ritual of the Eucharist we are tearing down all of this
hierarchy, all dividing walls and we are talking about one body and many parts.
This idea of ‘one body-many parts’ is not describing hierarchy - it is just
describing different parts in the same body, different functions.
Yago: Carl, we have ended our interview. It has been a wonderful sharing. I am very grateful for your generosity. You have shared in depth your experience on the peacebuilding field. Indeed, it is your vocation and passion. Thanks for passing to us your own processing and inner treasures.
Carl: Thank you, Yago. It was my pleasure. As we would say in isiZulu, “Siyabonga” (Thank you).
