Imagination & Peace: Transformative Arts inPostwar Societies

Girma Negash

Abstract

In several post civil war and post genocide societies,in recent years, individual artists, NGOs, andgovernments have initiated and invested in undertakingsof social reconstruction engaging artistic media aimedat healing victims and survivors, and reconcilingformer combatants and now alienated groups. Most ofthese projects are motivated by the intuitiverecognition of the cathartic value of recounting traumaor “working through one’s losses” as Dominick LaCapraput it. A more systematic examination of the healingpowers of art will raise the following questions. Isthe medical metaphor of healing relevant to society? Ifhealing is what individuals and communities go throughwhen they attempt to come to terms with their violentpast, can we generalize about the nature of thathealing? What ingredients in language and artcontribute to individual and societal recovery? Whatgives them their potency? I will respond to thesequestions first, exploring generally the potential ofthe “psychophysiology” of metaphor to transform

experience. In particular, I will argue that theaesthetic powers of art to intensify, clarify and givemeaning to experience lend themselves to the efficacyof healing. I will also examine the role of emotions inart and moral imagination as they are relevant tobuilding peace. This attempt to clarify the role of theimagination in healing will employ contemporaryillustrations of art projects applied in thereconstruction of violence-torn societies.1

Introduction

Déo remembers several times when the group went toperform in a Tutsi neighborhood, only to be threatenedwith death when trying to leave. Maurice and otherTutsi members of Ruciteme intervened and savedeveryone’s lives. “Maurice saved my life from the sansechèc more than once,” said Déo. “They wanted to killme because I was a Hutu. But Maurice convinced themthat they shouldn’t kill me because I was a drummer.”2

1The original draft of this paper was presented at the “Arts as Alternative Expression” session of the Consortium for Political Research general conference held at Pisa, Italy, September 6 to 8,in 2007. 2 Lena Slachmuijlder, “The Rhythm of Reconciliation: A Reflection on Drumming as a Contribution to Reconciliation Processes in Burundi and South Africa.” A working paper of Recasting Reconciliation through Culture and the Arts. Brandeis Univeristy, 2005. http://www.brandeis.edu/programs/Slifka/vrc/papers/lena/ (accessed 22 April /2007).

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The brutality and totality of modern war can only betamed by a renewed call for moral creativity andpolitical action to be inspired by the imaginativepower of societal healing.3 Science and policy are indire need of a rescue of sorts in the crucial areas ofconflict prevention and the healing of ruptured bodypolitics.

The focus of this inquiry is on societies where massatrocities have been committed and the lives ofcommunities and individuals have been ripped apart.Artists, peacemakers, theorists and practitioners arein broad agreement about the need to conjure old andnew rituals and the service of the arts to heal thewounds of mass violence. The influence of art onpolitics here is evident. But the question remains,how? What is the relevance of artistic representationand experience to the transforming powers of theimagination to heal? To assess in any meaningful waythe efficacy of the arts which are presently at theservice of societal healing, I will first muse over twocomplex dynamics - the tensions between the imaginationand healing, and the associated nexus, between politicsand the arts. Second, I will give an overview of theideas and theories of societal healing and the recentuse of the arts in peace building. Central to thatdiscussion will be the role of narratives, theperforming arts and music. Third, building upon the most

3 “Healing” is applied here in its broadest meaning of the term, although its psychotherapeutic usage comes closest to its connotation in regard to post-conflict societies undergoing individual and group healing processes.

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recent ideas and practices of applying art to societalmending and healing, I will forward a tentativeexplanation that will address the questions as to whyand how the arts, particularly performance arts, lendthemselves to the efficacy of healing.

Imagination and Healing

In “Toward a Medicine of the Imagination,” Laurence J.Kirmayer reminds us of the historic antagonism,according to early thinkers, between scientificEnlightenment and imagination as medicine. They thought“imagination had a fearsome power to conjure misleadingworlds that could drive a person mad,” and that“clarity and correctness of facts depended on reiningin this profligacy.”4 Kirmayer also locates the powerof the imagination in its historic context by referringto the traditional split between mind and body in theWestern tradition, and contemporary holistic andcomplementary medicine that espouse to repair thatsplit, the romantic rebellion that valorizedimagination and its primacy over reason, and the4 In this instructive article, Kirmayer considers three uses of the imagination in healing: imagination as medicine, imaginary medicine, and a medicine of the imagination. While imagination as medicine deals with the construction of new images to reshape the body, the last two: imaginary medicine, “in which wishful thinking, resonant metaphors, and inflated expectations lead people to pursue forms of healing with little rational support” and a medicine of the imagination, “in which the imagination is given an active role in the process of healing,” are both relevant to art and reconciliation in postwar societies. Laurence J. Kirmayer, “Toward A Medicine of the Imagination,” New Literary History 37 (2006),p. 583.

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Jungian process of active imagination instigating“dialogue between the rational self and the animatedfigures of dreams and reverie.” 5 However, it isKirmayer’s reflection on current traditional andalternative forms of healing that makes his updateddiscourse on medicine relevant to our present inquiry.Before embarking on assessing the status of engagingthe arts in peace building projects, the practicalityof art in political life should be clarified andrestated.

Poetics and Politics

The historical tensions between imagination and healingin both ancient and modern times find their reflectionsin the separation between poetics and moral practice.The tensions between the two can be outlined under fourbanners.

5 Kirmayer, p. 587.4

In the first instance, tension arose out of statesmen’sfear of the power of the arts which they justified inso many ways. This fear is epitomized by Plato’ssuspicions that poetry undermines the moral order ofthe republic in its capacity to destabilize humansmorally and psychologically. Moreover, the arts thatpay direct attention to appearances distract fromdivine insight and pure knowledge. Thus poetry as animitative art, even one rendered by the revered Homer,was to be strictly censored Plato contends in Socrates’dialogue with Glaucon, “… if you admit the sweetenedmuse in lyrics or epics, pleasure and pain will jointlybe kings in your city instead of law …”6 While his fearis about the uncontrolled passions that could disregardreason, rulers then and now have been fearful of art’spowers to mobilize opposition or provide alternativeideas unless, of course, they use it to their ownadvantage.7

The second fear of art and of its power comes from themoralists. While Plato condemned the arts on thegrounds that they are able to distract citizens from6 Plato, the Republic, Book X, 607a, trans. Alan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1968), p. 290.7 To Plato and his modern counterparts, the moral and imaginative power of art was seen as revolutionary and as anathema to the order of things. In contrast, Nietzsche inverts Plato’s prioritization of ethics and poetics by describing the creative deed as “becoming free from all illusion, as ‘knowledge,’ as ‘truth,’ as ‘being,’ as escaping from every goal, every wish, every doing, as a state beyond good and evil as well.” Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality. Trans. Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1998), p. 95.

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serious affairs,8 yet more pronounced objection to artcame from Christian thought as articulated by St.Augustine who warned against the sensuousness andsensuality of art that distracts men from the divine.In modern times, Leon Tolstoy and others would expressthe same suspicions focusing on the Dionysian aspect ofart.9

That art bakes no bread and is impractical constitutesthe third objection.10 The doubters in this category,the “practical” people, see in art a worthless form ofrelaxation and an unproductive pursuit of life. Theysee that art takes away from productive life instead ofenriching it. Such criticisms by “practical” folks8 Plato’s view of art which seems to be perceived from the spectator’s point of view is seen as amusement. Amusement art arouses emotions, but is not directed to practical life as Plato perceived it. Aristotle, on the other hand, argues that “emotions generated by amusement art are discharged by the amusement itself”making them harmless to practical life See R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 46-52.9 We also find in Emmanuel Kant’s “Critique of the Aesthetic Powerof Judgment” a similar separation between moral freedom and aesthetic freedom - aesthetic freedom is guided by subjective taste, while moral freedom is guided by universal law. Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyerand Eric Mathews ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 227-228. In other words, for Kant, ethics is grounded in the universal law that freedom gives to itself: the law of respect forall humanity. Aesthetics or poetics, by contrast, are concerned with judgment of pleasure or displeasure concerning the beautiful.Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Gayer and Eric Mathews ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 227-228.10 Edman, p. 51.

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reflect the separation of life from magical art inmodern times and the confusion over our ever changingnotions of work, play, and art.11

Finally, I add to these major conflicts between art andpolitical life an ideological bias which in fact can beinterpreted as a “method bias.” This objection to art,in a way, is a combination of the condemnations of artdiscussed above. There is a persistent belief thatunlike the sciences, the anti-method essence of artdoes not lend itself to explanation and understanding,let alone applications.12 The characteristics of art,affecting the senses and arousing emotions that arenegatively depicted by statesmen, moralists andpractical men alike, are the very characteristics thatintensify experience and usher in meaning. For thosewho believe in the instrumental value of the artisticmethod, knowledge about the anti-method method of artis an important undertaking that would challenge thenotion that those who apply the arts for social repairand healing are doing it out of blind faith andintuition. The instrumental view of art by peaceactivists departs radically from the view of those whohold art with suspicion. These practitioners deny thetensions between poetics and politics. Art andexperience become the same in their practice. In11 Collingwood, p 80.12For an elaboration of the notion that art has value in complementing science, see Peter Sederberg, The Politics of Meaning: The Politics of Meaning: Power and Explanation in the Construction of Social Reality (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984). Sederberg argues thatthrough the arts we better understand “the breakdown of shared meaning in the social life process,” p. 47.

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Edman’s words: “An art, properly important, would be,as Aristotle pointed out, politics. Its themes would bethe whole of experience; its materials and its theaterthe whole of life.”13 Theorists and practitioners ofpeace would thus like to understand better under whatcircumstances the arts are effective, and for whatreasons.

The disparate efforts by these practitioners (and nowtheorists and aestheticians) to conjure the magic ofthe arts is necessitated, it seems, by the shortcomingsof techniques used in conflict resolution and mediationinformed by both traditional wisdom and the socialsciences. What seems to be largely lacking in thesepromising beginnings is first, a systematic appraisalof such projects globally; and secondly, a seriousintellectual inquiry into why the aesthetic approachhas the exceptional potential and ability to producesuccessful results in the healing process of alienatedgroups after a period of mass violence where othermethods have failed.

Social Repair and the Extent of the Healing Metaphor

Theories and practices of individual and communalhealing come from the psychoanalytic traditions dealingwith individual and group trauma in the wake of massviolence or war. The horrific experiences of the twoworld wars and the Holocaust ushered in a plethora ofapproaches of diagnosing and treating war, genocide andtorture victims, with conventional psychoanalysis13 Edman, p. 12.

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playing the dominant role. More recently,anthropological and other interdisciplinary methodshave pushed the creative frontier to treat individualsurvivors and victims in more holistic and humane ways.

Anthropology’s contribution to the study of mass traumais having a particular impact on peace workers as theapproach “can delineate the dynamic relation betweensociety and trauma because, on the one hand, the socialcontext influences the self-perception and recovery ofthe traumatized and, on the other, the victimsthemselves, as a social group, have an influence on thesociety at large.”14

Any attempt at social repair then, by implication,deals with the dynamic between society and trauma. Thehealing metaphor is perhaps overextended, evenextenuated, as its organic interpretations do notaccount for all the complexities trauma involves. Theassumption of social healing implies that “one societyor group is wounded as a result of mass violence.” Atthe same time, the extension of this analogy shouldemphasize that “a wound that needs healing should bedistinguished from a plague or some pathologicalillness in order to underscore that which needshealing, is damage caused by the victimizing party.”15

14 Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco and Antonius C. G. M. Robben, “Interdisciplinary perspectives on violence and trauma,” p. 21. In Antonius C. G. M. Robben and Marcela M. Suarez-Orozci, Cultures under Siege: Collective Violence and Trauma (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2000).15 Girma Negash, Apologia Politica: States & Their Apologies by Proxy (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), p. 144.

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In a similar interpretation of social repair, ElizabethV. Spelman claims “Homo sapiens is also Homo reparans:we, the world we live in, and the objects andrelationships we create are by their very nature thingsthat can break, decay, unravel, fall to pieces.”16

Spelman asserts it takes all kinds of knowledge, skillsand judgment to engage in the work of social repair. Italso requires humility and reserving roles for thevictims, even the perpetrators, to participate in theprocess.

By far the most fruitful suggestion concerning theplace of the performing arts in social healing comesfrom a peace theorist who is most concerned with theaftermath of mass violence. Malvern Lumsden articulateswhat is at stake in rebuilding the shattered self:

By rebuilding, I mean focusing on the senseof bodily coherence and a safe surroundingenvironment; a stable, structured time frame;a holding environment in which emotions canbe nurtured and eventually re-owned; and,perhaps most significantly, a sense ofagency; and so on through each component ofthe sense of self and sense of community. Asself regains some coherence, some excavationwork may be undertaken, trying to remove the‘UXO (unexploded ordinance) of the soul’.17

16 Elizabeth Spelman, “Coexistence and Repair.” In Antonia Chayes and Martha Minow, eds. Imagine Coexistence: Restoring Humanity After Violent Ethnic Conflict. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), pp. 235-251.

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Lumdsen’s major contribution in light of art and peacebuilding is his call for action in the intermediatearea (transitional zone) between thepersonal/psychological and the social/structural areas– in the communal, cultural, and transitional zone. Itis in this area where “play” has significance. Lumdsenargues that play “provides a space for internalconflict resolution and personal growth, as well as thearea of ‘culture’ in the sense of permitting creativeexperimentation both with a variety of media and withsocial relationships (e.g. as in the theatre).”18 Theculture of peace he proposes emphasizes severalcomponents including – creativity, healing, educationand communal rites.

Engaging the Arts in Peace building

The involvement of diplomats, statesmen, peacepractitioners, and artists in engaging the arts tofacilitate mediation among groups in conflict is notnew. Peace-makers have used symbolic gestures toreconcile, to bring former enemies together, and toenhance the healing of victims of mass violence. Whatthey all have in common and what is new is the strongconsensus among practitioners on the special “magical”powers of the art media and rituals to transcendphysical and mental suffering, to transform selves andidentities. The new development in the praxis of peace

17 Malvern Lumsden, “Breaking the Cycle of Violence,” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 34, no. 4 (November 1997), 37918 380-381.

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is the accumulation of successful repertoire andprocedures of engaging the arts in social repair.

A cursory appraisal of the efforts of those committedto conflict resolution and peace-building demonstratesto what extent international organizations, NGOs, andcommitted humanitarians have undertaken the huge taskof reversing social breakdown and reconstructingcommunities in postwar societies. In the words offormer UNHCR commissioner Sadaka Ogata, in order tohelp refugees return to their old homes but nowcrumbled communities, “the fabric of the society wouldhave to be stitched back together.” According to her,this meant “looking at individuals and theircommunities in the most holistic way and designingintegrative projects that amalgamated social, economic,cultural, and spiritual aspects into a cohesivewhole.”19 The UNICEF has called on governments, UNagencies, and NGOs “to integrate the psychological andsocial needs of war-traumatized children into allaspects of their relief work.”20 Human rights scholarshave advocated ecological approaches to humanitarianintervention at multiple levels to meet the basic needs

19 Sadaka Ogata, “Foreword: Imagining Coexistence in Conflict Communities” in Antonia Chayes and Martha Minow, eds., Imagine Coexistence: Restoring Humanity After Violent Ethnic Conflict, San Francisco: Josey-Bass, 2003. Imagine Coexistence issued from the Imagine Coexistence Project that was sponsored by the UNHCR, Harvard University and the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University dedicated to enhance coexistence and break cycles of violence in war-torn societies.20 UNICEF. “Information: Impact of Armed Conflict on Children” http://www.unicef.org/graca/psychol.htm (accessed 14 June 2007).

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of victims, and to aim at social repair. Laurel E.Fletcher and Harvey M. Weinstein, for example, suggestcritical interventions that include: state-levelinterventions; criminal trials; truth commissions;individual and family psychological support forindividual and families; externally-generated communityinterventions such as memorials, the rebuilding ofcultural institutions, and conflict-management; andcommunity-driven responses such as public rituals ofmourning.21 Cultural and artistic engagements by peace-builders and artists are associated with the last twotypes of interventions. To highlight the import of suchprojects on the politics of reconciliation, I willdiscuss the place of narratives, rituals, theater, andmusic (drumming).

Narratives, Performing Arts, & Music

Among all the cultural props employed to facilitate thereturn to normalcy to people traumatized by war andrepression, the use of narratives and storytelling holdthe high ground. Testimony to the widely-held faith intheir healing powers is the sheer scope and widespread

21 Lawrence E. Fletcher and Harvey M. Weinstein propose an ecological model to help us comprehend societal breakdown and to isolate the critical needs of social repair in “Violence and Social Repair: Rethinking the Contribution of Justice to Reconciliation.” Human Rights Quarterly, 24 (2002), 573-639. An importcontribution to this line of thought is Malvern Lumsden’s works onpeace building which call for the reintegration of the individual,community and nation. See Malvern Lumsden, “Breaking the Cycle of Violence,” Journal of Peace Research, 34, no. 4 (November 1997), 377-383.

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use of narratives and storytelling for rehabilitation,conflict resolution and social repair. Genocide studycenters and an increasing number of literary studies,psychology and interdisciplinary programs have compiledan impressive amount of internet-based resources,documentations, films and videos. Among the documents,memorial objects, and bibliographies that benefit thepublic and the historian, it is the testimonialmaterials both written and oral that are much soughtafter for research and teaching. The availability andthe initial impact the stories of genocide survivorshave on people has brought an unprecedented attentionto narrative as a mode of understanding. The reverentcare taken to carefully archive those movingnarratives, in the form of memoirs, diaries andinterviews, has only added to that intellectualinterest.

Attention then was to turn from the intellectual andtourist interests in historical tragedies to caring forthe victims themselves with the commonsensicalassumption that recounting stories of an atrocious pastbenefits all involved in the wrongdoing. Apart from thewidespread belief in the effectiveness of its healingpowers, there are certain conclusions, even if they areconjectural, that people typically draw about theredemptive power of storytelling. The first commonassertion is that telling stories of past suffering isof therapeutic value. In other words, the release ofrepressed emotions of trauma to empathic ears isbeneficial to the victim in the long haul. A closelyassociated supposition is that lending a voice to the

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survivor is empowering in that it elevates the onceoppressed individual to regain her autonomy and tellthe story on her own terms. The last two reasons areoften associated less with survivors and victims, andmore with bystanders, public citizens, and ourhumanity. So the third reason why the narratives ofindividual survivors are valorized is because they beartestimony to the truth of horrific acts or violationsof human rights. Finally, these stories becomereminders of moral bankruptcy that allow us to examineour humanity.

The above assertions about the narrative method inidentity transformation or reconciliation do not answerthe question what in the nature of this aesthetic formproduces such results. Consider the followingsuggestive strategies and projects. Most academiciansand cultural workers enthusiastically report theimmediate benefits gained from oral narratives inbringing alienated groups together, but fail to assessthe aesthetic strategies employed. For example, CynthiaCohen, a scholar and a highly experienced culturalworker, reports in an article about a weeklong campaimed at addressing racial tensions involving teens andchildren from the African American, Vietnamese, andwhite communities of Biloxi Mississippi. Theinterventions involved having the teenagers sharesongs, stories, and listen to each others’presentations. Coyne concludes, “What they were missingwas support to take each other’s stories seriously andthe opportunity to understand their stories as part of

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a larger whole.”22 This kind of assessment does notshed light on the choice of the aesthetic strategy bythe cultural worker in the first place. Ironically,Cohen introduces in the same article some intriguingideas that will contribute toward a response to thatquestion to which I will turn shortly.23

Closely allied to narratives is the use of the theaterin conflict resolution and post-war community building.Among the more dramatic uses of theatrical arts is thedramatization by actors of personal stories told by warand genocide survivors. The International PlaybackTheatre Network (ITPN) is one such improvisationaltheater which has companies on seven continents and isused in educational, therapy and social change. JennyHutt and Bev Hosking have drawn some encouragingconclusions on Playback Theater as a creative resourcefor reconciliation from experiences in training andperformances in India, Fiji, Kiribati, and Angola. Theyclaim that theater helps to build relationships,process difficult events and permit deep exchanges incommon concerns. In other words, the therapeuticeffects come from the breakdown of isolation, the newfreedom of expression and recognition of deep emotions.

22 Cynthia Cohen, “Engaging with the Arts to Promote Coexistence,”in Anthonia Chayes and Martha Minow, eds., Imagine Coexistence: Restoring Humanity After Violent Ethnic Conflict (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 267-293. 23 Starting off with the dramatic words of introduction: “Understanding an enemy is like understanding a poem,” Cohen compares the state of receptivity it takes to understand a poetic image with the trans-subjectivity that is required to relate to one’s enemy.

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In conclusion, “Playback theatre can increase cross-cultural understanding and bring about social repair asaudience members see their experiences recognized andportrayed accurately and sensitively by those fromethnic and social groups from whom they have beenalienated.”24 More conventional theater has also playedan important role in post-war social repair activitiesin recent years. One such center is the vibrant theatercommunity led by the University Center of Arts of theNational University of Rwanda. Introducing it as a“detraumatization by gestures,” the center staged inthe summer of 2006 a dance/theater show, Des Espoirs(Hopes), written by Rwandan Odile Gakire Katese anddirected by Irene Tassembedo from Burkina Faso.Likewise, Iryo Nabonye or What I Saw was performed inApril 2004 for the tenth commemoration of the Rwandangenocide and again in 2005 at the Kigali Institute forEducation. Twenty artists including musicians,playwrights, and dancers were assembled by directorAimable Twahtrwa to discuss how events led to thegenocide, why it took place, and how best to representthat history. The play represents the painful twistsand turns of Rwanda’s history, but ends on a good notein a school scene. The scene represents the gaçaçacourts, and as described by a researcher, the well-intentioned spirit of atonement and forgiveness:

24 Jenny Huttt and Bev Hosking, “Playback Theatre: A Creative Resource for Reconciliation,” A working paper of Recasting Reconciliation through Culture and the Arts, Brandeis University. http://www.brandeis.edu/ethics/BIF_Papers/Hutt_Hosking.pdf (accessed 21 July 2007).

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The teacher asks the students to conjugatethe verb “forgive”. The students refusebecause they had seen their families killed.A 10 year old boy stands up to say, “Iforgave”, “You forgive” and then points tothe audience “You tell the truth”. Theaudience is being directed to ask for pardon,to tell what happened during the time of thegenocide.25

The drama is aimed at provoking responses, at providingan emotional outlet, and offering the means to copewith the painful past. Whereas the Rwandan theatersdeal with the aftermath of genocide, others intervenein ongoing conflicts. “In Place of War,” a researchproject associated with the University of Manchester,announces on its website that “it is researchingperformance from sites of armed conflict and by artistsand communities fleeing those settings.” Theorganization wants to extend its research to thecreation of theatre during the war (1983 to present) inSri Lanka. Other performing arts are also pursued bypeace builders who believe in harnessing the magicalpowers of art for social healing.

In many parts of the world, music and associated formsof art such as song, dance and drumming are among thepreferred artistic props to facilitate cultural andpeace work. One such example is an institute calledGlobal Partnerships for Education conducted at BrandeisUniversity, which brings together educators from25 Ibid.

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Israel, Grenada, and refugee communities in the Bostonarea with students and faculty participating. The ten-day intensive community-building experience concludeswith the participants composing a collective song thatreflects the ideas they have produced during the timethey were together. The readiness to resort to musicalmodes in facilitating reconciliation projects wouldhave to do with the belief in the bonding quality ofmusic. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) ofLiberia produced a peace song in sixteen Liberianlanguages, standard and simple English; and the UN andthe Liberian government commissioned a peace andreconciliation album involving 25 Liberian musicians.

Drums and drumming provide the rhythms forreconciliation in Africa and elsewhere. An Irishmusician, Roy Arbuckle, found drum music as a vehicleto building a community. At the start of his communitywork, Arbuckle was inspired by the idea of combiningthe notion of marching to different drums, whichrespects difference, with M. Scott Peck’s Different Drums,which valorizes the essential needs of humans to livein community with others. Arbuckle and fellow musiciansbring together the Lambeg drum, unique to Ulster, andthe Protestant and Unionist tradition, and the wee drumor the boohran (meaning deafener) symbolic to thenationalists and Catholics. They then mix these nativedrums with the Japanese Kodo and the African Djembidrum conventions. Roy Arbuckle recalls the year 1992when things were touchy: “We were still in the war andsome people didn’t like the idea much the same way asthey didn’t like the idea of the two communities

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getting together.” The drumming community defiantlyformed the new identity heralding the future communityof Northern Ireland.

Yet another remarkable case of intervention with drumsto mediate between alienated communities is told byLena Slachmuijlder. This is the story of twoBurundians, one Hutu and the other Tutsi, who takerefuge in a drums and rehearsal place turned into ahome for the displaced. Maurice and Déo become membersof the same drumming group called Ruciteme that acceptsall ethnic groups. The testimonies of these drummersreveal that the solidarity and trust built among thedrummers would transcend ethnic hatred as demonstratedby the many instances of the risky stand taken by anindividual drummer to protect his fellow drummer fromsure murder.

Thus the three artistic forms - narrative, theperforming art theater, and music - serve certainpolitical ends. They facilitate agency, identitytransformation, coexistence, or genuine reconciliationin the aftermath of violence. The focus here is on theperforming arts, the modes and expressions that areconducive to the cultural interventions of peace andcultural practitioners. Because cultural workers andartists committed to peace readily choose theperforming arts for their political work, I will focuson these media to examine their characteristicinfluence on politics.26 Such attention to the26 Other modes of artistic sites need the same attention – such ascinematic arts, the plastic arts, and especially, memorial

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performing arts by necessity should be linked to therole played by rituals in peace building activities. Wealso need to chart out the distinctions between ritualsand art proper, and the ambiguous areas between thetwo.

Rituals and the Performing Arts

In an important work on peace building Lisa Schirchexplores an alternative to rational negotiations andformal problem-solving by revisiting accumulated wisdomin traditional diplomacy and peace practice andsystematically introducing symbolic tools and ritualsin peace building. She advocates that peace builderscan develop “secular, improvised, and informal ritualsbased on symbols and stories that reflect importanttransitions in the conflict.”27 She outlines four suchfunctions of ritual in peace building. The firstinvolves the creation of a safe space where they canfocus on common ground away from the conflict site, “asculptures and museums. The Australian National Universityrecently conducted a cinema and peace building series on itscampus with each viewing followed by a post-screening session.While its educational value is not in doubt, the exercise does nothave as immediate an outcome as a live theatrical performanceinvolving active participants.

27Lisa Schirch, Ritual and Symbol in Peace building (Bloomfield, CT: Kumrian Press, 2005), p. 62. Schirch provides discipline-bound diverse definitions of ritual, but prefers a functional understanding of the phenomenon that uses “symbolic actions to communicate a forming or transforming message in a unique social space,” p. 17.

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liminal or an in-between place where transformation cantake place” and “a space where people can be fullyhuman, and see others as fully human.” 28 The secondfunction of ritual is to communicate a symbolicmessage. Ritual communication is unique in that itfacilitates complex and ambiguous messages communicatedacross cultures therefore allowing multipleinterpretations. Relying “on feeling and emotion tointerpret the significance of a message and deliveredthrough the body and its senses,”29 it enables peopleto “enact their full humanity.”30 Improvised ritualchannels emotions through rhythm, repetition, andpatterns of action. Hence the practice by peacebuilders to teach and learn through improvisation. Thethird function of ritual for peace builders is to help“participants make sense of the world throughcultivating values and sharing memory.” Transitions inworldview and identity become part of a new socialconstruction. Identities are possibly built, affirmedand healed; agencies are restored at the same time asbridges, and boundaries are built around relationships.Lastly, ritual reframes conflict problems so thatpeople can find a mutually satisfying way of addressingtheir human needs. Ritual provides “a pathway fortransformation, a rite of passage from one state to thenext.”31

28 Schirch, p. 61.29 Ibid, p.81.30 Ibid, p.61. 31 Ibid.

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The tendency to engage the performing arts in culturaland peace works is perhaps related to the distinctionwe should make between the performing arts and theother arts. The two are different in form. And becauseof that very reason one is more amenable to fulfillcertain moral obligations as opposed to simplyacknowledging their existence. Kingsley Price makes adistinction between performing and non-performing arts;the former “must be understood by reference to certainperformances; and the latter, by reference to certaincreations.”32 Price associates the non-performing artswith moral content and proposal, and works to beperformed with duty. And on great works of art heconcludes:

… Those who create them propose great thingsto men as do moral seers and social prophets,while those who perform them make great worksclear for all to see, as just men andreforming statesmen make visible to all thecreative insights of inspired morality andsocial criticism.33

Whether art proposes great things or inspiresmorality and duty, a relevant question to ask iswhat in the aesthetic imagination produces suchdesirable outcomes.

32 Kingsley Price, “The Performing and the Non-Performing Arts.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 29, no. 1 (autumn, 1970), pp. 53-62.33 Price, p. 61.

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Art, Aesthetic Imagination & Healing

In order to discuss the import of the aestheticimagination on social healing, the question of artisticinfluence needs unpacking. Murray Edelman has assertedthat “art provides the cognitive and emotionalresonances such political actions carry, and it mayplay a part in providing details as well, though itsprecise role in that respect doubtless varies withissues and circumstances.”34 Suggestive to theunraveling of the special kinds of links betweenartistic artifacts and the political world are those“resonances” or what they evoke. Locating the sourcesof these reverberations is what we should aim at.Edelman looks into narratives, pictures, and images foranswers. Others look into the artifacts of cinema,music, the performing arts, even rituals. Yet hardlyanyone raises the larger question of linking the coreelements of art with its power attributes that canevoke feelings and create transformation. Weacknowledge these attributes either intuitively or byconjecture, yet fail to identify them.

What is pulling us away from making such fundamentalinquiry? A collective hesitancy, it seems, confines ourefforts to only more charted paths. Thus our endeavors34 Murray Edelman has given perhaps one of the most insightful contributions on this score, as he grapples with the question of art’s role in expanding or limiting our political imagination. Theboldest assertion he makes is that art creates realities and thoseare perceived and conceived “in light of narratives, pictures, andimages.” Edelman, From Art to Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape Political Conceptions (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 7.

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are not systematic. We do not raise those questionsthat are, for example, common to all artistic forms.Or, we most often specialize in a favorite art form, orfocus on the one where we are most competent in termsof the craft. The more idiosyncratic and disparateworks on the cross-influence between art and politicsmake it difficult to build on the many insights gainedalready. Even after turning to the earnest task ofenhancing scholarship in this academic field, the stillshy courtship between art and politics does notencourage raising overarching questions on aestheticsand politics. The most common inquiries in this circleare narrowly focused on illustrating art as itrepresents a political discourse or as aninterpretation in terms of its political significance.An increasing number of investigations are looking intothe art media to enhance understanding of thepolitical. Of course, there has always been an interestin the pedagogical uses of the arts. More recently wehave been raising questions about praxis and therelevance of the arts in the service of moral andpolitical ends. Yet, there is a gap in scholarshipthat calls, in particular, for exploring the linkbetween form and content, between aesthetics andpolitics.35 An overarching question to ask would be:why and how are certain art works effective or potent in bringing aboutpolitical experience? To respond to this, one would have tolook into the very meaning of art and its essential

35 For a contribution towards such an inquiry see Girma Negash, “Art Invoked: A Mode of Understanding and Shaping the Political.” International Political Science Review (2004), vol. 25, no. 2 (185-201).

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characteristics that lend themselves to politicalchange and transformation.

Art and Experience: Form, Content, Material

The effectiveness of an artistic work, or the newinsight or datum it adds to a particular experience,comes about through a number of contingencies. It mayhave come from the artist’s intentional choice todisturb convention or to use a particular form to bringlife to the content, political experience in this case.Or the content may have been shaped by the artisticprops used or materials manipulated. And for the mostpart, imagination aided by craft brings life to thecontent.

With the aim of understanding what in the form, contentand material of an artistic work contributes to itspotency, we should ask where the “resonance” comes fromin the work of art. Irwin Edman came up with an elegantbut simple approach that takes stock of what artistictools and materials are available to the artist increating the cognitive and emotional resonance Edelmanrefers to. The poet, the musician, or the sculptor,will each have the means to imaginatively spark oursenses, and intensify experience. Beyond theintensification of our senses, the aestheticallyaccomplished work will contribute toward theclarification, and interpretation of experience.36 The

36 Edman’s clarification parallels what John Berger and Jean Mohr describe as “revelations” beyond appearances. “Revelations,” they say, “do not come easily. Appearances are so complex that only the

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sites for this aesthetic experience are made availableto us in the tools and modes borrowed from myth,symbols, and figures of speech.37 It is worthwhile totake note of how often we turn to narratives, metaphor,and imagery in our appreciation and experience of theaesthetic.

Content, in which the sedimentation of form resides, isdifferent from appearances and from illusion. As Adornoclaims:

No work of art has a content other than theone given to it by illusion, and, what ismore, given to it in the form of illusion.Central to aesthetics, therefore, is theredemption of illusion. If it succeeds, art’sright to exist is established, together withvalidity of its truth claim.38

The content of art then is manifested in two ways. Thefirst is in the artistic product itself where theillusionary part of the work of art is “mediated by its

search which is inherent in the act of looking can draw a reading out of their underlying coherence.” In other words, through a particular combination of form, content, and/or materials, the “truth” under the appearance will be revealed or clarified. See John Berger and Jean Mohr, Another Way of Telling (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), p. 118. 37 This author has suggested that the details of the artistic anti-method that stimulate the senses are to be found in the craftof the arts. These we seem to take for granted while they are in fact essential for artistic communication.38 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, p. 157.

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objectivity.” Thus by virtue of its existence, even aspretence, it subverts or blasts away overarching andpre-given forms. However, the independent or objectiveexistence of the art work cannot be separated fromsubjectivity and aesthetic experience. The secondentails its mediation by experience. In the area of ourinvestigation it refers to mediation by politics andmoral considerations. The politicization of the artworks is unavoidable in most cases, either aslegitimatizing or in opposition to the dominant systemof privilege. Much has been said about ideologicalproduction and the process of recycling the systems ofprivilege through politicized writing. Michael Shapiro,among others, has pointed to the availability ofdiscursive means to challenge ideology “in the form ofquestioning the implicit narratives, grammars, andrhetorics that reproduce and reinforce forms of powerand authority.” 39 On the other end, art has taken thenaturally critical position to be engaged or committedto pursue high moral ends. In the so-called Third worldcountries, for example, the arts have consistentlyrallied against social injustices, corruption anddictatorship.40 The artists are most often chroniclers

39 See Michael J. Shapiro, The Politics of Representation: Writing Practices in Biography, Photography, and Political Analysis, Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988, p. 54.40 See Girma Negash, “Migrant literature and political commitment:puzzles and parables in the novels of Biyi Bandele-Thomas,” Journal of African Cultural Studies, vol. 12, no. 1, June 1999, pp. 77-92. Three political themes stand out in Bandele-Thomas’s novels: “a description of the neocolonial wasteland; dystopic fears of dictatorship and economic stagnation; and madness (schizophrenia) as a surreal literary prop and a sign of unendurable suffering in

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of events and they construct and reconstruct realitiesin their imagination. In restoring voices and events,the art of postcolonial writers defies deterministichistoricism. Art can hardly escape the mediation ofpolitics in societies amid turbulent change.

The question of political commitment and art raisesonce again the problem of harnessing art instrumentallyin a way that could be detrimental to the health ofboth art and politics. The most committed art canbecome propaganda, didactic and in the long runextinguishes itself. Ronald Bleiker’s observation isinstructive on this. When art works are aimed at thepurely programmatic end of the political, the politicalcause and the supporting artistic programmaticstatements “both are likely to vanish together.”41 Toreturn to our discussion earlier about performing andnon-performing arts, the particular mode of aperforming art is to perform a task whose languagecarries more than moral intent but a duty to be carriedout.42

the Fourth World,” p.77. Also see “Politics and Facels of Identity: Changing Lenses in Gaston Kabore’s Cinema.” Social Identities, vol. 6, no. 3 (2000) 285-303, by the same author..41 Bleiker reminds us that Pablo Neruda’s poems “in support of Stalin survived neither artistically nor politically, whereas his less programmatic engagement with love, memory or inequality continues to fuel our imagination, and thus also our politics.” See Ronald Bleiker, “Why, then, is it so bright? Towards an aesthetics of peace at a time of war,” Review of International Studies, vol. 29, no.3 (2003), p. 389.42 Price, p.61.

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Artistic Tropes and Peace building Experience

Performances aimed at rebuilding identities in postwarsocieties most often have to do with giving testimonyin public and in private or telling stories to anempathic audience. By the same token, narrative andidentity performances are often structured or at leastare aimed to produce certain results.

One such performative approach as described by SaraCobb is informed by conflict and peace studies,literature and philosophy. Cobb presents the narrativeapproach to “fostering Coexistence” by suggesting aprocess that will begin with the demystification of anoriginal myth that accounts for accepting andjustifying violence. The original myths will “losetheir totalitarian grip” when they are open to “newinformation, new plots, new character roles, and newthemes.”43 Her approach then encourages the telling ofstories in an environment where “multiple kinds ofnarrative performance are permitted – specifically,movements between narrative positions as characters, asnarrators, and as listeners.” The story-telling shoulddefy linearity but incorporate irony, for example, inwhich the story-tellers take a “side-ways glances” attheir own views and the views of others.44 Thenarrators may also reflect upon areas of uncertainty or

43 Sara Cobb, “Fostering Coexistence in Identity-Based Conflicts: Toward a Narrative Approach.” In Antonia Chayes and Martha Minow (eds), Imagine Coexistence: Restoring Humanity After Violent Ethnic Conflict, p. 296.44 Ibid, p. 298.

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problems in their stories. In the poetics of PaulRicoeur one finds musings on narratives and identitythat are both similar to Cobb’s peacebuilding projectand divergent. The two narrative modes converge in thesense that they both deal with assuming the positionsof character, narrator, listener, and interpreter ofone’s own narrative told by the story-teller. The peacebuilder and the philosopher part ways, however, intheir relation with the subject. The philosopheracknowledges from a distance the formation of the moralself. According to John Wall, Ricoeur’s involuntarydimension of the narrative self objectifies “character”as “the set of lasting dispositions by which a person isrecognized.” At the same time, selfhood “involves thevoluntary pole of an ongoing narrative self-formation.”45 The peace builder, on the other hand, ismore intimately involved with the story-teller byclaiming to witness the identity forming andtransformation of the narrator when in fact she hasintervened in the process of the narrative. The realityof the peace building exercise is unwittingly engagedin imitating art.

The distance from oral narrative, which isperformative, to informal theater is not that far. Thetheatrical praxis in peace building borrows from bothtraditional drama in its classical Aristotlean meaningand the more participatory theater of postmodernity.The new theatrical spectator dialogue in which “thespectator, or watcher turns into an important agent of45 John Wall, Moral Creativity: Paul Ricoeur and the Poetics of Possibility (Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 35-36.

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the theatrical speech from his seat, or any otherplace” is best suited for political and peace work.Such a theatrical mode does obviously lend itself tothe participation by activists, victims and others, inenhancing understanding and the capacity to empathize.As Cohen points out:

Drama (and literature) can be crafted to helpus understand ourselves and our adversariesand their reality of our interdependence, inpart because of the emotional space createdby our awareness that we are viewing a“representation” of events and not the realevents themselves.46

The two kinds of theatrical works discussed above, the one in Rwanda and the international playback theater performances are illustrative of the powers of theatrical language and expression in communication andtransformation. In the narrative mode, plot, character,theme, and setting, all matter. In the theatrical mode,even of the anti-theatrical variety, consideration of praxis has been paramount among critical and radical playwrights. In post modern theatricality, Tania Patricia Maza claims, “a play is offered to the theatrical audience, the spectator or watcher turns into an important agent of the theatrical speech from his seat, or any other place (conventional or unconventional) surveys and assays with his sight the product of an universe of symbols and images.”47 Theatrical post modernity is “characterized by the view46 Cohen, “Engaging with Arts to Promote Coexistence,” p.285.

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of theater as a total spectacle, in which the dramatic text takes part as a provider of scenic messages.”48 InAntonin Artaud’s revolutionary words:

We abolish the stage and the auditorium andreplace them by a single site, withoutpartition or barrier of any kind, which willbecome the theatre of the action. A directcommunication will be re-established betweenthe spectator and the spectacle, between theactor and the spectator... (First Manifesto).49

Playback Theater in its various conflict resolutionprojects around the world reflects the nouveau théâtre inmany ways. In the words of the founder of the playbacktheater, Jonathan Fox, the participatory theater hasconstructed “a protected, neutral space” in whichparticipants engage in story telling and drumming, inboth verbal and non-verbal communication. Fox alsoconcludes that the drumming and playback theatersessions initiate emotional involvement in which deep-seated feelings of pain and loss are exorcised.Finally, Fox makes a distinction between the more

47 Tanya Patricia Maza, “Towards a Postmodern Theatrical Poetics.”Trans, Hernando Pareja. Revisita Trimestral de Estudios Literarios, Vol. VII, no. 25, April-May-June 2006. http://casadeasterion.homestead.com/v7n25post.html (accessed 21 July 2007).48 Ibid.49 Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, trans. Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1958), p. 96.

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ritualistic arts of playback and drumming and otherartistic forms such as film making and visual arts.

Drums - their types, who plays them, and who is inpossession of them - have been a point of contestationof power and authority throughout human history. Thosewho were in control of them, like royal houses,relegated their use to state rituals. They are alsoinstrumental for bonding as totems were to beidentified with primordially.50 They also, as GeofferyWhitehall says about music modulations, “can amplifypolitical differences (as rhythmic encounters,connections, and intensifies) music stands to offer thepossibility of affirming life, joy and differencebeyond state philosophy’s drive to createuniformity.”51 Drumming during the Burundian monarchy,for example, was restricted to royal occasions by royalfiat. The ingoma drum was played to preserve nationalunity and identity until the end of the monarchy. Sincethe demise of the monarchy and the end of sacrednessand elitism associated with the ingoma, drumming groupsbelonged to the various clans, and finally came totranscend even clan and ethnicity.

As a form of acoustic music, drumming both traditionaland modern bring participants to some kind of temporaryunison. The sharing in the rhythm of drumming, peacepractitioners claim, creates and maintains new50 I attribute this insight to William House, a psychologist and musician, who maintains that music acts like a totem with the power to bind. 51 Geoffrey Whitehall, “Musical Modulations of Political Thought,”Theory & Event - Volume 9, 3 (2006), p. 1.

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relationships of trust and solidarity and also raisesself-esteem, which would ultimately lead to personaltransformation.52

Conclusions: Aesthetic Properties, Emotions &Moral Action

Thus we can underline those aspects of the art formthat intensify the senses for an aesthetic experienceand a state of revelation beyond. In the narrativestructure of story telling, the dramatic situations itcreates, the characters it depicts and the plotcomplications affect our senses. The individualstories of victims of war are as dramatic as theirfictitious counterpart. Providing a safe haven forthose who have survived mass violence to have theirstories recounted, the playback theater encompasses andfacilitates aspects of conflict resolution such ascatharsis, witnessing, providing solidarity and a newsense of empowerment. Elements strongly present in boththe narrative structure of story telling and theplayback theater include empathy, inclusion, and publictestimony. In these performances the audience isinclined to sympathize and identify with the story-teller. The narrator’s story is transformed to be partof a repertoire of the group’s story attaining itsmoral significance for the future.53 In peaceworkshops, drumming is a newcomer that has effectively52 Lena Slachmuijlder, “The Rhythm of Reconciliation.”53 One is reminded of the story of a slave in the AmericanAntebellum who, having been humiliated and whipped by hismaster during the day, is redeemed by his fellow slaves whoretell the event in their mournful songs by night.

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been used to bring disparate peoples together and tocontribute to psychic healing. The rhythm ofreconciliation is tied to the tone and resonance thatevokes certain emotions, emotions of solidarityperhaps. With its hypnotic powers of rhythm, sometimesaccompanied by dance, the power of drumming to bondparticipants together is unmistakable.

The few artistic tropes discussed above are simplysuggestive of the kind of scholarly attention that iswarranted to understand better the characteristics inthe (anti)method of the arts that renders them potentand ready to be harnessed by the powerful and powerlessalike. The approach taken here is not only intended tofocus on the poetics of good over the poetics of evil,as the latter was demonstrated by the creative energyof the Nazis;54 it is meant, instead, to highlight therole of art in “guiding our moral imaginings” bydemonstrating that “we can have genuine emotionstowards people and events that we know are merelyfictional,” as Gaut put it recently.55 The theoreticallink between imagination and moral action requiresfurther contemplation as it is demonstratively relevantto societal healing. A suggestive link between art andmoral creativity can be diagnostically depicted in thefollowing diagram:

Aesthetic Properties ------ -----> Emotions--------------> Cognition54 John Wall, Moral Creativity, p. 171.55 Quoted in a promotional text for a newly published work by Berys Gaut, Art, Emotion and Ethics (Oxford University Press), 2007.

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(phenomenal & intellectual) (intensification) (clarification)

(experience & transformation)

ETHICS

(moral action)

As a re-statement of what I have argued so far, art’sinfluence on the politics of peace building can besummarized thus. The artistic properties of art formslike the few performative arts we have discussed abovecan first be appreciated for their sensual andintellectual impact on human experience. The experienceof those who participate in the intentionally-organizedrituals and performances to bring people together arefound to be transformational in their emotional impactfor those who have participated in them. Such anexperience produces new insights, lessons, andpreparedness to cope with trauma and to construct newidentities – a cognitive process that bringsclarification to peaceful possibilities. The finaltransformative experiences that are revealed throughagency and the forming of new solidarities are themeaningful moral ends sought by all those who dare toexperiment with what the arts have to offer. Even withthe knowledge that we all could live artfully withoutart, we have to resort to its imaginative powers out ofnecessity and urgency.

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