Political dimensions of trauma and language

Political dimensions of trauma and language                                 

Tonya Alexandri February, 2015

‘Born outside the walls my father spent his whole life struggling to get in. The same happened to me. I spent my whole life trying to enter the walls of another society’ (Mothers and Sons, 2007, Theodor Kallifatides)

I have written in various texts posted here about the reasons behind my decision to create this site, which practically meant to finally break the silence in a big way. However, I need to mention that this site is only one aspect of my battle to restore and fight for justice, and I can add now that this journey has allowed me to transform tangible injustices into legal battles. It is all part of an immense effort to restore, heal and bring about some justice because as we each heal and fight for justice, dynamics around us change and some greater healing beyond us takes place. This note today focuses more on the political dimensions and the underlying, connecting thread of injustices that my family and I have suffered consistently in various contexts. Ultimately, trauma and abuse, discrimination, targeting and harassment, bullying and rights violations are all political. I think it is important to mention here that relevant literature, statistics and research findings suggest that childhood trauma and early victimization not only encourage but also facilitate re-victimization in adulthood. Survivors are usually stalked, harassed and deprived of their rights in multiple diverse contexts before they can finally manage to break the silence or understand dynamics and self-sabotaging decisions. However, I will not go into this here, but I do refer to these studies in other parts of this site. Additionally, I would like to mention that although I use the term ‘survivor’ throughout this site, it is necessary to bear in mind that this is only one aspect of their identity. Survivors are many other things, and much more than the traumas and wounds they have survived. Finally, in this post I briefly refer to how language defines us and is linked to our identity and I also partly explain why this site had to be bilingual,– apart from the obvious reason that using two languages gives me the possibility to reach a wider audience.

To begin with, nationality, motherland, immigration and relocation, belonging, language and bilingualism and identity have always been salient issues for me and intertwined with the injustices and losses I have suffered. Many of these issues have surfaced in my artwork, both in the past and in this last series of drawings. Across time I have also explored these topics in educational contexts. Specifically, I explored issues of migration, language, identity, transition and adaptation in a project titled Migration for Love:  ‘A social psychoanalytically informed exploration of identity transitions in women who have immigrated to partners’ country’. As mentioned in the previous post, experience and knowledge, research, essays or projects are all situated within time and space and particular theoretical frameworks. In this case, a social psychoanalytic framework was used to explore unconscious processes at work during women’s migration to partner’s country and how this shapes their sense of self. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to provide interviewees with freedom to narrate their story and the free-association narrative interview method was used to generate more complex data. My findings seemed to support Akhtar and others’ claims that certain factors like mastering the new language, and embracing cultural diversity among many other things, may facilitate adaptation and may lead to the emergence of a new reconsolidated hybrid identity, which is ‘not a synthesis but perhaps a multiplicity of selves’ (Copelman, 1993, cited in Akhtar, 2004). Specifically, it is assumed that language is not a neutral means of expression, but it is situated in the culture. It is the product of the culture and it reflects life in a certain time and place. Actually, the interviewees’ were highly invested in education and language.  Both feared that their children could be engulfed by their partners’ culture and language, which could mean loss of self and would ultimately sever cultural continuity. Mercer (2008) claims that. one’s mother- tongue is never as completely invested as when one comes to live in another country where a different language is spoken, I will not go into these topics in depth here nor post the whole essay, but I hope it has become somewhat clear that language and identity are intertwined and that both languages play an important role in my life and are reflected in the things I create. Both languages define me and I oscillate between the two at different times. I use both languages in my artwork and maps of places I have lived are often depicted. I have often felt suspended between these two languages, these two physical places and these two socio-cultural contexts and my two identities and cultural influences are in constant interaction, as in all immigrants, refugees or bilingual individuals.

Inevitably, adversity, trauma and rights violations have made this experience much more intense. Coming to live in a country with a history like Greece increased the potential for rights violations & discrimination on the basis of Otherness. For those who are not aware of Greek affairs I should mention that in Greece one is still constantly aware of the circumstances that developed after the civil war that took place after World War II and one may still suffer the consequences. Many people have been persecuted and victimized since, for their political views and opinions, for their Otherness. After all, Greece is the European country whose beautiful islands were used as places of exile for political prisoners up until the 70s! Anyway, to return to my personal experience, I think it is time to refer to only some tangible injustices in this area for the time being. Despite my being born to Greek immigrant parents, according to my legal documents, at least, I was illegally denied Greek citizenship and was granted a resident permit. I remained in this status despite my numerous petitions to the Greek authorities and despite the existing laws at the time (in the 1980s). When I turned 21 and was eligible to voting the authorities blatantly denied me the right, since I suppose my liberal political preferences were not to their liking. Although, I was of Greek origin, I obtained Greek citizenship at the age of 23 and only because I married a Greek citizen. However, although I was denied citizenship and the right to vote, in other contexts I was not considered an immigrant or a refugee, but a Greek citizen. For instance, I sat the university entry exams with Greek candidates, not immigrant, foreign or Cypriot candidates, which would have been advantageous for me in terms of university choices. Political discriminations and rights violations based on Otherness or on my political views and outlook on life have occurred across time. However, being targeted and stalked for one’s beliefs, religion or nationality has an immense impact in all areas of one’s life.

Theodor Kallifatides has explored these issues in his books and articles. He is a prolific writer who has written about marginalized immigrants and people living in exile and about language and identity. In Modern Greek Literature: Critical Essays, Monika Kallan writes about the profound impact that the change from first language to second has had on him and how writing in a new language has transformed both his past and present and changed his identity. Kallifatides was born in Greece in a small village in 1938. His father was a Greek refugee that had fled Turkey in 1924. Later, when he was a child his family was forced to leave the village they had settled in and move to Athens, due to his father’s political views this time. He writes ‘My father had sworn to never set foot in the village. He had two homelands and there was no room for him. A fugitive from Turkey he became a refugee in Greece. How could the people in his village have treated him the way they did? Who had handed him over to the Germans? Could there be another explanation other than the fact that he was not a local? Embittered, hurt and proud he was forced to find his homeland within him, a stranger among strangers in Athens’ (Kallifatides, 2012). In the early sixties, in his twenties, Kallifatides emigrated to Sweden, where he has lived ever since. He writes in both languages and explores issues of identity, language, transition and immigration and discrimination based on ideology or class.

The following extracts are from the Greek edition of his book ‘The past is not a dream’ (2012, Εκδόσεις Γαβριηλίδη)

‘In the village things were different, I knew everyone and everyone knew me, I said whatever came to my mind, the words flew out of my mouth suddenly and swiftly like swallows. Perhaps this is what Homer had in mind when he talked about ‘the flying epics’. I did not understand then. Much later, an immigrant in Sweden, the same thing happened to me. The obvious in life was lost and it became a loss that cannot be described. The obvious is indescribable, that is why it is self-evident’

‘The son of the teacher from Molai refused to exchange what he had inherited with what the city offered and which would never become his. He denied everything……  The prisons and the islands of exile were still full of political prisoners…… In short I was still in my village, where a man stands upright like a cypress tree and as motionless as a stone’

‘It was in 1956. The plans for the future were clear. I would go to university to study Law, my father’s dream, or Philosophy, which was my dream. Most candidates passed with the aid of preparatory courses (frontistiria). I neither had the necessary finances for these courses, nor did I think that I needed them. A bigger problem was the certificate from the police confirming that I was true Greek with a register as white as feta cheese ‘.

‘I would not continue my father’s work. On the contrary, I was to inherit his fate. I too would become a fugitive and a stranger ‘.

‘’I had resumed writing, but something strange was happening. Greek was not compatible with my life, the city, the weather, the trees and lakes, the sun, the sky and the clouds. I felt like I was singing off key. Had I started to forget Greek? No. I hung out with Greeks every day, I read newspapers, I gave speeches against the junta at various meetings. But I could not approach Swedish reality with my language. Swedish reality had its own language’.

References

Akhtar, S (2004) Immigration and Identity: Turmoil, Treatment and Transformation, Oxford, Aronson.

Course Team (2007) in M. Horton-Salway, Project Booklet, The Open University.

Hollway, W. (2009) ‘Applying the ‘Experience-Near’ Principle to Research: Psychoanalytically Informed Methods’, Journal of Social Work Practice, vol.  23, no. 4, pp. 461-474.

Hollway, W. & Jefferson, T. (2000) Doing Qualitative Research Differently: Free-Association Narrative and Interview Method, London, Sage.

Καλλιφατίδης, Θ. (2007), Μάνες και Γιοι, Εκδόσεις Γαβριηλίδη

Καλλιφατίδης, Θ. (2012), Τα περασμένα δεν είναι όνειρο, Εκδόσεις Γαβριηλίδη

Mercer -Marchetti, M. (2008) ‘South Africans in flux: Exploring the mental health impact of migration on family life,’ African Journal of Psychology 2009, vol. 12, pp. 129-134.

Nesting dolls and memory processes

A work in process, situatedness of experience and metaphors….

‘If the past is a core of who we are, then our movement in time always brings us into a new relation to that core’.   (Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present, 2007)

To begin with, all human experience is embodied and situated in context. Within this perspective it is assumed that my artwork and writing, like all experience, is situated in time and place. Whatever I write or draw and create is always the result of my understanding and capacity to process and express experience in that particular context. Also, as one revisits and reprocesses material and memories, one’s understanding of events and of the underlying dynamics and broader contexts of these experiences is altered. Those who have embarked on the long and difficult journey of healing and understanding, know that this is not a quick, straightforward or easy process and that it requires one to shed denial, fears and distortions, in order to reach a place of deeper knowing and empowerment, In fact it is an ongoing process of exploring the multiple aspects of past and current experience, while understanding that ‘the past is not static, or ever truly complete; as we age we see from new positions, shifting angles’ (Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present, 2007). Hopefully, this journey of exploration and self discovery allows us to gradually discern through memory distortions, elaborations and psychological mechanisms. It further allows us to see through lies, often deliberately created by those that hurt us. Ultimately, it allows change and empowerment that comes through knowing, through dealing with painful emotional experiences, through releasing grief and confronting losses but also through recognition of cues and triggers that sabotage our well-being and safety.

Secondly, the artwork posted below involves a reprocessing of experiences and art that I had worked on in 2006 using ink, a whole different process all together. In particular, the Russian nesting dolls theme and images used here (and in other past drawings) refer to memory processes and my quest for clarity and deeper knowing. I often return to the nesting dolls metaphor because I find it very useful and illustrative of (traumatic) memory processes. The tiny solid doll in the centre represents the kernel of the memory, the facts, the dynamics, the reasons and the deepest knowing, and then each nesting doll represents the various versions of the story, the distortions and elaborations, the earlier interpretations and conclusions, which may all be the result of the way the mind and memory work, the result of our defenses against trauma and assault or in the case of more severe interpersonal trauma the result of deliberate, sophisticated procedures that perpetrators engage in, in order to create amnesiac barriers to protect what must not be remembered. The nesting dolls metaphor depicts the layers and layers of memories and mental processes one has to pick through to reach deeper knowing and insight. One could view it as the representation of non integrated aspects of a memory and /or each doll could represent a different aspect of a memory (like emotions, sensations, the actual incident, the context, etc). So for me, nesting dolls seem to also be an appropriate metaphor of one’s quest for the truth and deeper knowing. However, the nesting dolls theme could carry different meanings for different individuals depending on their experience and expertise. They could also represent many other things that may not be linked to memory. Furthermore, they may trigger diverse and perhaps conflicting ideas, thoughts or emotions depending on one’s experience and outlook on life, because all our meaning making, like all our experience, is situated. For instance, in a lecture on interpersonal neurobiology, Alan Schore (2013), mentioned that ‘the lateralized self system represents a nested system, with an outer, later developing orbitofrontal-limbic regulated core, an inner earlier developing cingulated-limbic regulating core, and an earliest evolving amygdala-limbic regulated core that lies deepest within, like nested Russian dolls’. The nesting dolls metaphor could also refer to concepts like the inner child or to the search for one’s true self or it could illustrate a secret buried under layers of lies and defenses. Actually, while writing this I got a bit curious about the origins of nesting dolls, so I googled them and read that they were initially crafted in China as back as 1000 AD and not in Russia, which they are mostly associated with. Specifically, the Chinese initially crafted nesting boxes, which were both functional and decorative. I also read that in the 1700s the tinniest doll in the centre held a grain of rice, which must have had some meaning attached to it. Soon after the dolls were crafted in Japan, where they looked like the seven lucky gods from the local mythology. For instance, the outer doll represented the god of longevity and happiness. Again here it is easy to understand how cultural context may influence both our use and understanding of metaphors and images. The dolls reached Russia later, probably in the 1890s. It is believed that Sergei Maliutin was commissioned to create the first Russian set. These Russian wooden dolls are called ‘Matryoshka’, which was a very popular female name derived from the Latin root ‘mater’ which means ‘mother’. I read that this name was associated with the image of a mother of a big family who was healthy and had a portly figure like the nesting dolls. Subsequently, it became a symbolic name and was used to describe these pretty brightly painted nesting dolls. After reading this I realised that nested dolls could be used as a metaphor for motherhood and fertility, as well. As mentioned above all our human experience and understanding of everything is embodied and embedded in our time and socio-cultural context. Our meaning making is never out of context. We can never escape this. Therefore, I think interpretations are only valid in terms of what they say or reveal about the person making the interpretation. Attempting to interpret someone else’s artwork is helpful because of what one might understand about oneself in relation to their own experience and intentions… Hence, exploring our reactions, emotional responses, thoughts and meaning making as we interact with our own art or other people’s work is a more meaningful approach. Creating and then exploring our own art can become a springboard for self-understanding, emotional change and growth. Each time we return to our own artwork we find new meanings and when we interact with other’s artwork we can attach our own stories and personal meanings to the images, and thus, ultimately understand more about ourselves.

Finally, I would like to mention that this site is a work in process, which is inevitable because a shift occurs in our views and opinions as we move on in life, age, fight battles, change and grow, learn and understand more. Additionally, as one processes trauma and experiences one’s evaluation and understanding of available relevant material also increases and changes. Therefore, it is natural for material and references to be removed or added at times. It is also important to mention that I refer to ideas and findings that I think are interesting and/ or useful for me or people who are on similar journeys or have similar interests; however, I think that survivors of trauma are the best experts of their experience and should explore what may be useful or appropriate or even safe for them each time. Personally, I have found through error and trial that it is more helpful to be a selective consumer of trauma related material and that it is necessary to be open, but also, cautious, selective and critical of material that is available online or in book stores. It is important to bear in mind that what may seem wise or valid at a certain point in time may become outdated through our deeper and broader knowledge of a topic or area. Furthermore, I believe that learning and knowledge is vital for survivors as it highly facilitates their journey; however, ultimately, apart from critical thinking and acquisition of relevant knowledge the most important prerequisites for healing, empowerment and ending victimization and manipulation are awareness of what sets off unhelpful responses and a safe enough and ‘trigger free’ environment (to the extent that this is possible). Deeper understanding and recovery from injustices and severe trauma is highly facilitated by processing and knowing what and who triggers unhelpful and self sabotaging responses. So material, approaches, activities and experiences that may be helpful and positive for one person may not serve another at a particular phase or context in their journey.

Tonya Alexandri- January, 2015

Scan51Iatrogenic creation of pre-established responses

Wishing you all a peaceful 2015

May everyone enjoy health and have joy and peace this New Year

The image below is part of a collage (poster) created in 2008. The particular ink drawing used in this collage is part of a series of quick and  spontaneous ink drawings I created some years before as part of processing the emotional aspects of OR experiences and medical procedures. Ink is very fluid as a medium and it can allow one to capture and process the emotional and sensational experience of the moment or memory. Its qualities facilitate the immediate, automatic recording of emotional experience, which allows catharsis to some extent. It could also be said that because it does not leave much room for correction or change it enables one to express emotional experiences and responses to memories and material in a fast and precise way.

I will be posting more of these more spontaneous drawings as soon as I find the time.

alone