[Discussion] CONF.: Humanitarian Responses to Narratives of Inflicted Suffering

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

Humanitarian Responses to Narratives of Inflicted Suffering

October 13-15, 2006

Conference of the Humanities Institute and the
Human Rights Institute of the University of Connecticut

Conference Organizers:
Richard D. Brown, Humanities Institute and
Richard A. Wilson, Human Rights Institute

Introduction

This international conference will analyze humanitarian responses to 
private and
public narratives of politicized suffering that has been inflicted by 
states,
private political groups and also by more structural causes such as 
apartheid,
colonialism, and social conflict. The main themes of this conference 
are: first,
to understand the character, form and voice of the narratives 
themselves; and
second, to explain how and why some narratives of suffering become part of
political movements of solidarity, whereas others do not.

Recent discussions of narrative and suffering have gravitated toward the
uniqueness of the relationship between violence, language and meaning,
concentrating on how violence is involved in the dialectical unmaking and
remaking of our understanding of subjectivities and bodies. Elaine Scarry's
(1985) influential treatise The Body in Pain asserts that pain destroys 
language
and dissolves the world of the victims. Pain and suffering create 
conditions of
radical epistemological doubt, which may not be possible to articulate 
by the
sufferer, or knowable by the "other";. For writers such as Jean-Francois
Lyotard, the silencing of narratives through terror is the most 
fundamental of
all human rights violations. In each of these formulations, narrative and
suffering are contradictory terms that preclude one another.

Although Scarry's and Lyotard's approach has its uses, this perspective 
can be
understood to define one area of human subjectivity as ultimately 
ineffable and
unknowable. Consequently this might obstruct theorization of narratives on
suffering and hinder scholarly inquiry into how public forums for 
speaking about
suffering not only constrain, but also elicit testimony. Even if it is 
true that
experiences of political violence and suffering can defy speech, this 
has not
prevented post-conflict governments and the United Nations from establishing
national forums (e.g., truth commissions) and international criminal 
tribunals
to hear, collect, and preserve victims' voices. As the South African 
Truth and
Reconciliation Commission demonstrates, public testimony from victims and
confessions from perpetrators are now recognized as essential to the 
process of
democratization and reconstruction in post-conflict countries. This 
phenomenon
is not new and it is the latest in a long history of private and public
expressions of suffering in literature, the media, visual artistic
representations, and other more private locations such as letters, 
diaries and
journals.

Because documented narratives on suffering have existed for centuries,
researchers need to analyze in more detail the content, form and 
structure of
these narratives, so as to understand why authors or artists generate 
narratives
on suffering and how their motivations shape the types of narratives they
construct. Studies such as Veena Das, et al. (2000) and Arthur Kleinman 
et al.
(2001) have examined the aftermath of political violence and provided 
insights
into how narrative plays a central role in the reconstitution of the 
self and
the remaking of a social world. They argue that if pain and suffering 
destroy
people's capacities to speak and explain themselves, then the 
resuscitation of
narrative can be the first step towards recreating social selves. 
Scholars must
evaluate whether this is the case and how this process of reconstructing the
social self proceeds.

Another key element of this discussion involves the relationship between 
private
narratives of suffering and the institutional contexts that elicit such
narratives and channel them into the public sphere. Law is the central
institution here, and we must investigate to what degree the legal process
evokes and authorizes particular narratives on suffering, and also excludes
other kinds of narrative selectively. A number of authors have come to argue
that courts of law and much of the international discourse of human rights,
although created for speaking about violence, actually constrain speech by
molding experience into pre-set formulations that reduce the diversity and
specificity of violation narratives. Increasingly, writers on this 
subject have
come to question the efficacy of existing political, legal and institutional
contexts for speaking about violence. Legal language and human rights
conventions, they argue, filter out important symbolic and expressive 
dimensions
of fear and intimidation.

A major theme of the conference will focus upon the politicization of 
narrative,
and will examine how narratives on suffering have contributed to the 
creation of
political constituencies. In the United States, Harriet Beecher Stowe's 
Uncle
Tom's Cabin [1852] and a dozen first-person slave narratives such as that of
Frederick Douglass [1845] famously intensified the anti-slavery 
movement. In the
twentieth century, South African novelists such as André Brink, J.M. 
Coetzee,
Nadine Gordimer, Alex La Guma, Njabulo Ndebele and Lewis Nkosi vividly 
portrayed
the massive injustices of racism and apartheid for a local and international
readership, thus helping to inspire a global anti-apartheid movement. 
Conference
papers will address how such narratives reinforce, or even call into 
being local
and global humanitarian movements. They will consider whether the 
capacity of a
narrative to galvanize national and international opposition to systems of
suffering lies in the compelling content and form of the narrative 
itself and
its ability to arouse indignation. The success of suffering narratives may
depend on the extent to which they translate political ideology into a 
widely
accessible medium. "Successful" narratives seem to be those that 
construct an
appealing idea of common humanity, and invoke the imperative of empathy and
solidarity despite divisions of race, ethnicity,nationality, and religion.

In order to complement such aesthetic concerns, we must also hold in 
view a more
"political" understanding of empathy and narratives of suffering that 
emphasize
political factors external to the narratives themselves. Here, we must 
be aware
of the instrumental and even cynical use of narratives by political 
elites as a
way of giving expression to amorphous popular sentiments. Narratives on
suffering are often sequestered by new political elites engaged in
nation-building projects and used to advance their own self-interest. Nearly
every nation, such elites claim, is founded on original acts or events that
include suffering and violence. In this nation-building process, the diverse
stories of victims are refashioned into genres of suffering and 
redemption, and
then used to create new foundational myths of the nation. The conference
participants will consider under what conditions this does or does not 
happen.

Finally, the conference will encourage greater deliberation on the ethics of
researching narratives on suffering, so that scholars might be more 
reflective
about the methods and theories they use. They will assess the special
considerations that may impinge upon the processes of reading about, 
listening
to, and documenting and recounting narratives of fear and suffering. 
They will
weigh whether specific ethical issues are involved in studying 
victims’
testimonies and documenting the attempts of individuals to “remake a
world” through narrative. The aim of the conference would be to 
create a
better understanding of how researchers in various disciplines can 
respect the
integrity of testimonies, but at the same time draw out their social 
nature, and
examine the degree to which they are embedded in historical, political, 
social
and cultural processes. To explore the multiple kinds of suffering 
narratives
and to encourage cross-cultural and cross-temporal comparisons, the 
conference
will offer broad plenary discussions as well as thematic sessions which will
include the place of narratives of suffering in the following 
contemporary and
historical contexts:

Slavery and Abolition
Apartheid
Colonialism and Decolonization
Genocide
Legal Institutions and Human Rights Commissions
Media and Visual Representations



Call for Papers

Conference: Humanitarian Responses to Inflicted Suffering
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269
October 13-15, 2006
Organizers:
Richard D. Brown, Humanities Institute
Richard A. Wilson, Human Rights Institute

We invite scholars from the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Law to submit
papers that analyze humanitarian responses to narratives of suffering 
inflicted
by states, political groups and or social, economic, or cultural forces. 
Panels
will address apartheid, genocide, colonialism, slavery and abolition, 
the media
and the law.

Further information at: http://www.humanities.uconn.edu/

Please submit a one-page abstract and current c.v. (up to 3 pages) by 
March 1,
2006.

Professor Richard A. Wilson
Gladstein Chair of Human Rights
Director, Human Rights Institute
Thomas J. Dodd Research Center
University of Connecticut
U-1205, Storrs, CT 06268, USA
Richard.wilson@uconn.edu