Where Does The Hurt Go: Embodiment, Epistemology, Memory
CW: Homophobia, Sexual Violence, Illness (starts at *** below)
This may take a while so make yourself a tea. I have been really enjoying Genmaicha lately. More on tea later.
I have many threads I want to string together here so hopefully this ball of string ends up as interconnected as it seemed as it has sat in my head for a few days. A few weeks ago while listening to Teaching in HigherEd Bonni Stachowiak reminded me of Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach (2017, 20th anniversary Ed) so I read it. As a first gen there were a lot of things that resonated for me, however one of things that I really took away as a reflection point is to think deeply about how much where I am from is in where I am. Mine is pretty much a copy paste story of one that Palmer mentions in the book: grow up in a rural middle of no where place, work hard to get out of that middle of no where by education, make sure that the work that I do erases and does not reinforce the kind of toxicity I experienced growing up. I know that some may go another route and end up reinforcing the same toxicity they experienced in a sort of "well if I had to do it this way you should too" sort of argument that is usually tied up in some nice little "but rigour!" bow. I am not a fan of this logic, and the reason why I am not a fan of it is because working through the memory of the toxicity and boundaries that is embodied in each of us does not mean we should put that on other people (our students, our staff, our family), but I know very well that this is a common response because where do you put all that hurt.
How each of us in HigherEd works through our hurt is going to be incredibly contextual. If you think about all the rituals and "norms" in HigherEd there are a lot of things that make you wonder if they were started by someone working through their hurt. Like Greek life on campuses which is not very common here, but interestingly the place where it is very common, UWO, is a place where a lot of hurt is reinforced. More on that later. HigherEd as Palmer suggests, is highly individualistic, and it is space that reinforces competition in all of the systems over community. I argued on Twitter this week, a thought that was reinforced by a discussion with a colleague, that HigherEd is too individualistic to have any real space for advocacy. You need to value community and the needs of society in order for advocacy to grow and take root; HigherEd is sadly not that place. Yes small pockets of advocacy work are being done by instructors, by classes, by student groups, by some unions, but to say that HigherEd is a place committed to sustained advocacy is false. The structures and systems are not set up to support or sustain advocacy, and until that changes there is no way advocacy work can have traction. Everyone is by and large looking out for number one, and their number one is themselves because that is how the system rewards folk. As Palmer states, there is a tension between money and ethics at the heart of these systems. And which one you pick is often based on the context and privilege you have.
This contextuality and lived experience is so important in everything we do in HigherEd. When that context is forgotten it can alienate students from the learning community, it can can create boundaries and expectations that are impossible. I reinforce with my students as well as in the consults I do in relation to assessment design that having space for the "I" in work is important. There needs to be a connection and not an erasing of the individual in the work. So far this weekend I have read 2 excellent books about Indigenous research, Shawn Wilson's Research Is Ceremony (2008), and Kathleen E. Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe) 's Kaandossiwin: How We Come to Know (2011). Both of these books reinforce lived experience, memory, and relationality of what it means to learn and research. Our selves, our experiences, our memories, are foundational and "[h]ow we locate self can affect the kind of influence we have and who will listen to us" (Absolon,73).
Educational spaces should ideally always be spaces of interconnectivity, of relationship building, of community. It should be a multiple way sharing of ideas and concepts. Students expressing to instructors their points of view just as much as instructors providing insight into their experience and thought. In a meeting with another colleague this week we both agreed that the best part about teaching is office hours (thanks Sarah for the great chat). Being able to have the space to discuss concepts in a way that is not necessarily tethered to a syllabus, or a lesson plan is often one of the very real reasons folk want to get into academe in the first place. I know for me one of the most powerful and memory building experiences of my teaching career (after teaching in the AWCCA program) is when I had the opportunity to supervise 2 undergraduate theses. The kinds of conversations I had with the students as they were writing their theses were filled with the sorts of emergent learning outcomes (and thanks to Dianne for putting how to make emergent outcomes more apparent in my head all week as well) that you would want in an educational space. It was a space (which again Palmer speaks to) where power which is (outside to in) is replaced with authority (inside to out) where they author(ized) their work and research.
I hope you are with me so far because I am about to take a turn. So okay, context foundationally important, individual histories and memories that are embodied and shared also very important. There are ways to frame this that are super positive and create the kinds of outcomes that are carried forward for years in a real positive way. But there are also kinds of ways that institutional context, institutional history and memory, can be framed to create super negative, toxic, and traumatic outcomes.
****
I start this turn with a declaration. I am not well. I have not been well all week in fact and I am not sure what it is exactly (not COVID because I never leave my house), but you will see me work through this in this section of the post. I started the week with pains in my side. These pains are still there. Sometimes they come when I breathe, sometimes they come when I lay down and turn wrong, sometimes they come when I bend down to pick things up. They are more painful at the end of the day of work, they are more painful when I think about certain upsetting things (you can see where I am going with this). When I was a teenager one of my good friend's mom gave me this bit of Ukrainian wisdom when she asked me how I was and I said "I have the start of a sore throat." She said "when you have a sore throat we say it is because you spoke poorly of someone, when you have an ear ache it is because you heard something you shouldn't have heard." This wisdom has stuck with me for more than 30 years now because if you know anything about embodied trauma, it makes a whole lot of sense. So the best I can give you about why I am not well (and the best it will have to be because I have not had a check up in over 5 years because all the doctors I have ever seen are homophobes and I am yet to find one who isn't) is that I am full of bile.
Where does that bile come from? Well take a look around is all I can say. We are in a pandemic where systems ignore that people are dying. Those who need support are being forgotten and those who advocate for those who need support are silenced. I hear and read a lot of things in a day. It is part of my role to provide support, it is also always who I am and have always been deeply since I was young. In high school during breaks there would be a circle of girls around my locker telling me what had happened to them today. And before you think this is "typical" teenage girl stuff there is no such thing. There were stories of violence and depression and abuse. And I think about this now and think about how much I used to do trauma support work in different ways even before I had ever read a thing about trauma (because such books did not exist in my town). And I also think about how I have never been good at listening to the kind of wise guidance that Burk and van Dernoot provide in Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide for Caring for Self While Caring for Others (2009) which is finding sustainable social support so that all that secondary trauma doesn't stay trapped in my body and I turn into a ball of bile. My new found love of organic caffeine free tea will only take me so far.
It is no coincidence that my pain started on Monday because that is when the news about what happened at UWO started appearing more frequently in the news and social media. Hearing that news was definitely a trigger for me and for many others. I did my PhD at UWO and I have stories, so many stories. Things that were said to me on that 21 bus on the way home from office hours: "hey dyke nice tie, how about...." I will not finish this sentence. Things that were said often, things that made me realize I had to take my tie off in my office before going home. London was not a place for queer people. And yes we created a small community, but small being the word. More times than I can count I was refer to as "oh the other one" (which I guess is what happens when there is only like 2 out people in the department). A lot of things happened in London. So many things in fact that I did not actually go to my graduation. I worked almost 6 years on a PhD and never went to graduation because the thought of going back there caused me to have a panic attack. The embodied trauma I have with London is very real. One of my very good childhood friends lives in Windsor and whenever I take the train to see her I start having a panic attack in Woodstock that does not stop until we are well on our way to Chatham. I don't think I can ever set foot in that city again sadly. The fact that Congress was supposed to be there in 2020 was really rough and I was glad when it was cancelled.
Okay so some of you are probably asking what this has to do with anything, or what this has to do with you, person who cares about HigherEd and pedagogy (because individualism right). I share this because it is important to let people know that what happened there during OWeek is not a one off. It has been happening for decades. There are many people who are feeling this exact pain this week and reliving that trauma. I also share this because your students (even if they are not at UWO) are probably seeing this and feeling this too. I share this because we do not have sufficient supports in place for people who are feeling this deeply. I share this because institutional systems and institutional cultural history ("work hard play hard" right President Shepard) bolster this happening year after year. The pandemic has isolated communities and supports further. People are carrying this memory in their bodies. For some, like me who doesn't have anyone to have this conversation with in person, it means I have pains in my sides until I work through this. This can be the same for some of your students. Maybe they will be quiet, maybe they won't show up to class this week. Because if you are working through hurt, sometimes the last place you want to be is in a class (even if it is virtual) or in a meeting. But for some they may be desperately looking for people to talk to and be in community with (hi also me), and the classroom could be the spot for that to happen. We all need to be prepared for those conversations, for acknowledgement of sharing, and have referral places at the ready for your particular city or institution. I am ending this with some resources that may be helpful for you if you are in Toronto below.
So much of where I am from and what I have experienced informs where I am and what I do. I am sure this is the case for many of you. I hope that we become more empathetic and more acknowledging in our communication space. Remember the hurt has to go somewhere for everyone, and if we are supposed to be a space where epistemologies, ontologies, and axiologies are framed, please be prepared for how that hurt comes out.
Comments
Post a Comment