language of loss and healing: an interdisciplianry by...

LANGUAGE OF LOSS AND HEALING: AN INTERDISCIPLIANRY

EXAMINATION OF CULTURAL DIS-EASE AMONG

MARGINALIZED PEOPLES

By

JENNIFER ANDREA NACCARATO

Integrated Studies Final Project Essay (MAIS 700)

submitted to Dr. Michael Gismondi

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts – Integrated Studies

Athabasca, Alberta

August, 2013

THE LANGUAGE OF LOSS AND HEALING 1

ABSTRACT

In a postmodern age scholars are beginning to recognize the arbitrary lines drawn by

disciplinary specialization and awareness is emerging of the cost associated with these

arbitrary lines. This essay examines the cultural dis-ease of marginalized peoples as a

result of the legacy of colonialism and The Age of Enlightenment. Specifically, this

paper examines how cultural dis-ease is constructed as well as explores how it can be

alleviated. Grounded in an interdisciplinary framework and, using the disciplinary

theories of psychoanalysis, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, anthropology as well as

mourning and trauma, this essay explores how the fragmentation of language impacts the

self as well as the community. Moreover, it upholds the importance of the sustainment of

non-disciplinary knowledges and narratives as a means to reconstruct the fragmented self

and culture, thus alleviating issues of cultural dis-ease.


Table of Contents

The Language of Loss ................................................................................................. 3

Cultural Significations of Language ........................................................................... 5

Folkloric Identities and Realities ................................................................................ 7

Cultural Dis-ease: The Legacy of a Shattered Past ................................................... 11

Narrative: The Mosaic of Cultural Reconstruction ................................................... 14

References ......................................................................................................................... 21


Language of Loss and Healing: an Interdisciplinary Examination of Cultural Dis-Ease

among Marginalized Peoples

The Language of Loss

Humans are the only species that can communicate complex ideas and emotions

through symbol. This symbolic communication -language- both creates human

consciousness, and enables cognition of the conscious state. Language shapes human

existence, so much so that it is near impossible to consider the nature of human existence

without it. It is the core of what defines humanity. Composed of a complex and dynamic

system of symbols, language gives access to society and culture. This access presents

opportunity for knowing but also suffering. Not only does language allow us to

conceptualize and articulate our suffering, but it is also the source of our first trauma; a

trauma that is expressed by all subjects constituted by language. In this essay, I will

examine the destructive and curative dynamics of language on ethnic minority cultures.

From a psychoanalytical view point, language is symbolically associated with the

Father. The language of the Father represents all the prohibitions of social regulations

via the formal structural symbolic order. These social regulations represent a “loss of

highly valued parts of the body: including withdrawal from the Mother’s breast” and

therefore often understood symbolically as castration (Freud, p. 663). Through this loss,

the infant undergoes a turning away:

Object-cathexis are given up and replaced by identifications. The authority

of the father or the parents is introjected into the ego, and from there it

forms the nucleus of the super-ego, which takes over the severity of the

father and perpetuates his prohibition against incest, and so secures the

ego from the return of libidinal object-cathexis (Freud, p. 664)

Put differently, because sociocultural practices are bound up in language, the

infant in learning language learns that it cannot exist in a continued state of possessing


the Mother. Although analysts describe this oedipal stage of psychosexual development

with emphasis on varying mechanisms, most agree that the acquisition of language (or

entry into the symbolic order) results in initial fragmentation of the self. Eric L. Santner

describes this fragmentation as the process whereby “an infantile sense of omnipotence-

primary narcissism- is fragmented by the realization that ‘I’ and ‘You’ have edges, that

‘you’ have a life and a will that are irreducibly separate from my own” (Santner, p. 19).

Each speaking subject has experienced this initial fragmentation upon her entrance into

the symbolic order.

The symbolic order represents societal norms which are the introjected values of

the Father into the super-ego. Language, is responsible for not only the loss of the

Mother, but also creates the template dictating how the subject is to behave within her

fragmented state. What this means from the perspective of psychoanalysis, is that our

emergence as a conscious and distinct individual is associated with trauma and loss.

Theories on mourning and trauma use this initial or primordial trauma to expand on the

implications of our original fragmentation. Santner argues that “to be a speaking subject

is to have already assumed one’s fundamental vocation as a survivor of the painful

losses- the structural catastrophes- that accompany one’s entrance into the symbolic

order” (Santner, p. 9). Although our emergence as a speaking subject leaves us bearing

the scars of our entrance into language, it is the rebirth by which we achieve

consciousness.

The consciousness that we gain from language and culture is what “provides the

framework that enables people to make sense of their interior experiences” (Georges, pp.

12-13). That is because of the unique force that symbols carry; “they are simultaneously


internalized and are, thus, an integral part of the individual’s ‘objective’ and

‘commonsense’ experience at the level of action” (Georges, pp. 12-13). Language and

our use of it allow us to create these objective and commonsense assessments. These

assessments enable us to understand our bereft condition and allows for the possibility of

healing this condition.

Santner describes the destructive and curative dynamics of language as the double

bind; “language, and in particular the tropological resources of language, is used to heal

wounds that languages never ceases to open up” (Santner, p. 14). The ongoing cycle of

healing and harming experienced through language highlights the profound ways in

which human psychological wellness is bound up in language. Examining how language

shapes our reality and defines our individuality reveals the psyche is interconnected with

our entrance into the symbolic order. Cultural assumptions impact how experiences are

interpreted and understood within the subjects. The subject’s interpretation and

understanding is contingent upon the cultural signification of language. This principal

will be fundamental in the following examination of how cultural signifiers shape the

subject.

Cultural Significations of Language

The formation of ‘ethnic groups’ or cultures, “relies on common cultural signifiers

which have developed under specific historical, social and political contexts and which

encourage a sense of belonging based, at least in part, on a common mythological

ancestry” (Barker & Dariusz, p. 123). These common cultural signifiers shape the reality

of culture due to the historical, social and political contexts of language. The symbols

that become reflective of reality are a commonly accepted and therefore a naturalized


belief. According to the theory of critical discourse analysis, the naturalization of

language means the taking “of culturally contingent codes and turning them into

unchallengeable commonsense”- the very structure of language holds both implications

and assumptions (Barker & Dariusz, p. 124). Although they are naturalized, words hold

historical, political and social connotations that reflect the underpinnings of cultural

values and beliefs.

For instance, many individuals raised in western culture might agree with the choice

to call the actions of a murderer “barbaric”, at the very least they would not take

exception to word choice or to the connotations of “barbarism”. However, if we consider

the etymology of barbaric, a different meaning emerges. Connotations of Imperial

Roman civilization and implications of dominance and conquest replace the seemingly

innocuous catch-all phrase with a more sinister and complex meaning. As a result, when

a murderer is referred to as “barbaric”, the word choice perpetuates the connotations of

cultural discourse that suggests only an uncivilized tribesperson could commit an act such

as murder. These value-laden symbols exist in the discourse of all cultures because

naturalized language carries with it the history of the culture and the forces that shaped it.

Culture is not static. It ‘is constituted by changing practices and meaning that

operate at different social levels. Any given national culture is understood and acted

upon by different social groups so that governments, ethnic groups and classes may

perceive it in divergent ways” (Barker & Dariusz, p. 124). As described by Chris Barker

and Galasiñski Dariusz this dynamic state of culture influences understanding, not only

of cultural reality within the culture, but also perceived realities surrounding other

cultures. In the case of western views of “savagery” or “barbarism” we come to recognize


how historical legacies are partly responsible for the dynamic nature of culture. The

records of these legacies exist within naturalized language.

What we perceive to be part of an objective reality is simply a symbol that reflects

its cultural history. In the example of the term “barbaric”, there is a division in the

meaning of the signifier and what it signifies. What is used as a label to be applied to

those deemed to be behaving in a socially inappropriate manner has connotations of

empiricism, domination, and cultural superiority. To be labeled “barbaric” reflects a

western cultural taboo, which is simply a “discursive and institutional limitation which

becomes habitual within particular cultures at certain periods. Once a subject is tabooed,

that status begins to feel self-evident” (Mills, p. 65). These self-evident taboos shape

how we relate to other cultures. The naturalized assumptions which exist in cultural

dominant discourse reflect a reality that is always contingent. Moreover, in examining

the underpinnings of language, the dominant discourse of western self-other dichotomies

begin to emerge, as well as their implications on cultural minorities.

Folkloric Identities and Realities

I have already established the cultural “I” bound-up in language; as well as the

contingent nature of cultural signifiers that represent loss and recompense. Language is

also essential in the formation and sustainment of cultural identity. Language reaffirms

perceived myths of commonality and identity among people. It creates a form of

identification with representations of shared experiences and history told through stories,

literature, popular culture and the media (Barker & Dariusz, 2001, p. 124). Cultural

stories are tied to identity, never static, changing with the circumstance surrounding it.

The cycle of sustainment and reinterpretation of culture is often tied to cultural folklore.


Cultural folklore contains non-disciplinary knowledges that are often more ‘real than

true’ (Peterson, 2012). Non-disciplinary knowledges, are “knowledges active in the

lifeworld that contain a totalizing character comparable to those of religion, myth and

philosophy that preceded the modern form of knowledge” (Angus, p. 63). These non-

disciplinary knowledges, reveal a deep sense of philosophical and psychological insight

that pre-dated the western Age of Enlightenment.

Folklore is among the most ancient forms of expressing non-disciplinary

knowledges. Toni Morrison argues that: “although folklore may have begun as allegory

for natural or social phenomena; folklore can also contain myths that reactivate

themselves endlessly through providers - the people who repeat, reshape, reconstitute,

and reinterpret them” (1988, p. 159). The language of folklore, not only serves as a way

of interpreting reality, and reaffirming cultural values, it is also responsible for navigating

change and reconstitution. Folklore and other linguistic traditions are tied up in cultural

identity. They shape the reality of communities and provide them with the ability to

change and adapt according to their circumstances.

Anthropologists researching the folkloric and oral traditions of ancient cultures

such as the Ndembu and the Ojibwa disclose how for these communities individual

wellness is related to cultural wellness. If the culture is unwell, the individuals within it

will suffer (Georges, p. 17). Central to healing the un-wellness of the cultural body in

many ancient cultures, including the Ndembu, is the act of confession. It is a “confession

of not only the patient, but also those of relatives, neighbors, and other members of the

community who all must confess in order that the sick person get well” (Georges, p. 17).

The linguistic traditions of the Ojibwa also revered language as a powerful healing tool


which engaged the community and encourage cultural reflection and sustainment of

values. Eugenia Geroges states that:

The Ojibwa, like many other people cross-culturally, regard

serious illness as a penalty for violating social norms and moral

precepts. Serious illnesses understandably generated fear and

anxiety and, given the Ojibwa’s view of their etiology, became a

matter of reflection on connections between the individual and the

social body. Serious illness signaled the violation of cultural norms

highly significant to this egalitarian, hunting-fishing society:

failure to share food and other material possessions, failure to

reciprocate with others who had previously shared with you,

manifestations of competitiveness, and acts of cruelty and

proscribed sexual activity. (2010, p.16)

Words are expressed by the individual and the community as the curative part of a

collective process. The confessions acknowledge the interconnected nature of individual

health and cultural practices. These confessions are interconnected with all parts of

Ojibwan and Ndembu existence. Not only did the language of healing represent folklore,

spirituality and wellness, but it also preserved the culture and educated the subsequent

generations. In fact, “ritual confession thus provided a recurrent public forum for stating

and restating the core values of Ojibwan culture to members of the group as well as a

venue for the socialization of children” (Georges, p. 17).

Colonialism: Shattering of Ancient Symbols

Colonialism used a naturalized belief that the ‘other’ was uncivilized and

therefore was less than human. Targeting and eliminating the ‘uncivilized’ practices of

the ‘savage other’ was achieved by ‘uncreating’ the language of the ‘other’. Ancient

races whether Native American or African were stripped of articulateness and intellectual

thought (Morrison, 1988, p. 138). Practices such as those of the Ojibwa and Ndembu

were categorically torn apart and subsequently lost. Being dominated re-educated and


enslaved, nonwestern cultures were denied the language that defined and reaffirmed their

cultural identity through assimilation. Exacerbating the problems of colonization, The

Age of Enlightenment and the contemporaneous Age of Scientific Racism, solidified

western notions of superiority in a measureable manner. Exemplifying this were the

writings of David Hume, Immanuel Kant and Thomas Jefferson, to mention only a few,

that had documented their conclusions that blacks were incapable of intelligence

(Morrison,1995, p. 89). In order to validate their discriminatory views process of

difference which were ‘scientifically justified’ formed the dynamics of domination which

Kien Nghi Ha describes as, “discourses that attempt to analyze the simultaneous nature of

exclusion and connectedness through a contextually conscious determination of

differences and similarities” (2008, p. 2).

The act of conquest and subsequent colonization in the name of spreading western

civilization was responsible for the destruction of many cultures and traditional beliefs.

This destruction and redefinition of culture and therefore language shattered traditional

concepts of reality. Early empire building has been responsible for the abolishment of

many traditions, cultures and even the destruction of entire races. It has impacted entire

communities in a fundamental way. The dawning of the Age of Enlightenment

intensified the fragmentation of ancient traditions and revealed the darker implications of

scientific racism.

The traditional stories, such as those of the Ojibwa and Ndembu, predated

metaphysical/scientific divides and did not observe the separateness of life and

spirituality but a synchronous existence. With the dominance of western discourse,

arbitrary lines were drawn, demarcating the real and the imagined. Folklore and oral


histories were relegated to metaphysics and neatly labeled as “myth”. Interconnected

reality became disconnected and a holistic way of knowing was replaced by

fragmentation and dissection by means of binary opposition. In a divided world, a belief

in one objective reality emerged.

This level of fragmentation, I argue, is the cause for the slow decline of traditional

faith and healing in western culture as well as the loss of traditional non-western beliefs.

Such layers of fragmented identity result in several complications: inability to access

traditional cultural healing practices, image of non-westerners as ‘less than’, loss of

language and therefore meaning. The melancholia that is associated with the loss of

cultural symbols reveals cultural dislocation and alienation which reiterates the first cut

of castration that had marked the subject’s first entrance into the symbolic order. The

fragmentation and isolation of marginalized groups is the hallmark of cultural dis-ease-

the loss of cultural symbols of prevents alleviation.

Cultural Dis-ease: The Legacy of a Shattered Past

Cultural self-loathing is a result of loss of cultural signifiers. The inability for a

marginalized group to be accepted into dominant western culture perpetuates this psychic

suffering as reflections of the self are negative and undesirable. The oppressive nature of

the colonialist spirit only intensifies cultural suffering and self-loathing. The collective

legacy of colonialism and The Age of Enlightenment have catalyzed the non-dominant,

colonized communities’ suffering.

Cultural dis-ease is the psychic record of actions carried out against despised

groups. It is not a disease of physical illness as much as it is a physical and mental

suffering of an entire culture. The hyphen in dis-ease represents the disconnected state of


cultural signifiers that is the result of protracted suffering. It is an illness that impacts the

psyche of an entire culture and transcends all levels of existence. This kind of dis-ease is

present in African American slums and in First Nations reserves. Through a lived and

inherited history of suffering members of these groups develop a deep sense of cultural

self-loathing. Cultural self-loathing and disorders symptomatic of it are described by

Gay Wilentz as including: nervous breakdowns, alienation, depression, and the physical

ramifications of these and other emotional illnesses (Wilentz, p. 2). Joseph Pivato

attributes part of this self-loathing to growing up with divided loyalties (those of the

subject’s culture of origin and those of the dominant society) which results in a splitting

of the self into inimical parts (Pivato, p. 167). This self-loathing reflects a dislike for

one’s own family and values, as well as regarding members of one’s own ethnic group as

foreign, dirty, poor, less than human. These feelings are generated from the fragmented

identity of the ethnic minority who has learned self-hatred; a hatred of self as other which

is also a distinctly non-western self (Pivato, p. 169).

Self-loathing is created by the unjust social conditions that minority groups face

(Pivato, p. 179). In reference to First Nations and African Americans, self-loathing is a

result of impacts of colonization and The Age of Enlightenment and it also marks

assimilation without acceptance. Postcolonial theory states that although the ethnic

“other” is always seen as inferior within their western society, there is an expectation that

the marginalized “other” disguise their otherness by adopting western cultural signifiers.

However, despite (attempted) assimilation, despised groups always remain the ‘other’

and therefore cannot access their cultural signifiers, nor can they exist within the western

symbolic order. With the loss of ancient healing practices associated with language,


overcoming cultural self-loathing is nearly impossible. Although each individual feels

this sense of self-loathing, it is a plight that is also shared culturally. The loss of

traditions and the language which allows the understanding of experience silences those

who suffer from cultural dis-ease and imposes a state of isolation. Historically despised

groups share a commonality of shattered identity that is rendered unspeakable by loss of

the signifiers that could have defined them.

Recently, scholars of cultural studies have begun exploring the impact of a history

of suffering on entire cultures. A growing number of experts recognize that the health of

an individual is directly linked to the health of the community and culture (Wilentz,

2000). Gay Wilentz, argues that “one can be culturally ill- in other words; that there is a

relationship between individual psychosis and ethnicity, particularly in a despised group

whose ‘history is full of suffering’.” (2000, p. 1). Wilentz explains that “not only are our

ills individual, cultural, national, and global; there are interconnections between all of

these and the dis-eases we contract, from disorders of the mental/physical self to the

breakdown of the mind/body” (Wilentz, p. 2). I would argue, therefore, that cultural dis-

ease can be a result of protracted collective historical suffering (such as trauma war,

genocide, residential school, displacement or cultural fragmentation due to colonization).

This dis-ease is compounded initial castration and the loss of signifiers that I have already

discussed.

Cultural groups of the First Nations and African Americans experience precisely

this historical suffering and the dis-ease attendant on this suffering. Dis-ease represents

the fragmented state of the individual and community. The fragmentation I refer to is the

loss of the culture and language that was to be recompense for division from the Mother


and entrance into society’s structural order. Cultural losses, I have argued are a result of

colonialism and The Age of Enlightenment which have eliminated the possibility of

recompense for originary suffering; for the first cut of castration. The binding qualities

of traditional narratives and oral histories are lost and the people who once upheld these

beliefs are shattered. Therefore, I am arguing that cultural dis-ease is chronic due to the

inability to adequately address and reconstruct the fragmented self, within the new fields

of signification imposed by another dominant, colonizing culture.

Narrative: The Mosaic of Cultural Reconstruction

Oral narrative traditions such as those of the Ndembu and Ojibwa reveal how

individual wellness is connected to the social body. These traditions focus on healing

through narrative and confession. Eugenia Georges describes the mechanisms involved

in cultural healing and wellness:

Healing is facilitated when symbolic therapies are used to effect changes in

emotional and physiological states, although the links between the symbolic and

the physiological are as yet not well understood. The central anthropological

insight here is that historically determined cultural values and social processes

give meaning to a symbolic therapy and, in doing so, facilitate its ability to heal

within a given context. (2010, p. 12)

Through assimilation, these once fundamental narrative practices were replaced

by ‘civilized’ western science and binary belief systems. Consequently, the context in

which these cultural groups were able to address historical suffering was lost. The loss of

language and culture meant the undoing of interconnected existence and the loss of

traditional cultural narratives. Cultures that relied on narrative and tradition for healing

were left with a void. No longer having access to traditional curative practices, cultural

dis-ease among minority groups has become a chronic and untreatable condition.


This chronic condition is perpetuated by western cultural symbols. These symbols

represent naturalized assumptions and are therefore constructed and dynamic. The

underpinnings of these symbols can be revealed through analysis and be rewritten, like a

story. This suggests a possibility to rewrite histories of loss and trauma through narrative.

Narrative theory recognizes that individual problems emerge from a social and cultural

context (Monk et al., 1997). Narrative therapy focuses on interconnection of individual

problems, recognizing that “people’s lives are created and interpreted through stories: the

ones they hear, the ones they create in their own minds and the ones they tell and retell”

(Seligman, p. 284). Echoing the ancient insights of Ndembu and Ojibwa cultures,

narrative therapy recognizes the curative power of narrative within a sociocultural

context. Narrative can help us to explain and understand how human subjectivity is

reconfigured in relation to the world outside and to history (Hunt & Sampson, 2005).

Access to this information surrounding human subjectivity allows the narrator the means

by which to recognize the origin of their cultural dis-ease, and the story that represents it.

Narration is a telling of stories. The act of a member of a marginalized group

narrating their experience of cultural suffering, lived and passed down, reveals that

identity is shaped by stories. Through telling of these postcolonial narratives, a member

of a despised group can recognize their self-loathing as a story created and told to them

by the dominant westerner rather than an unchanging and objective reality. A more

holistic and interconnected sense of meaning can emerge. In this light, the perpetuation

of self-loathing and dis-ease is a result of the repetition of negative dominant narratives.

The application of narrative therapy centers on the information in the stories

which tell people how to behave as individuals or family member’s- we understand how


these stories act as restraints and keep people stuck inside and limited by their dominant

stories (Seligman, 2001). Once the story is written, the first step of overcoming the

limitations of the dominant story (or master narrative) is to discover what that dominant

story is and how it was constructed. The current master narrative of ethnic minorities

tells the story of their displacement and disjunction within their dominant culture.

Dominant stories act as the center around which we form our identities. According to

Linda Seligman, within the context of Narrative therapy, “once the stories have been told

and deconstruction has begun, the stories can be modified, or revisioned. Revisioning

refers to both changing the story and changing people’s versions of their lives”

(Seligman, p. 287).

The dominant stories of postcolonial minority groups are of slavery, genocide,

oppression, loss and assimilation. These stories reflect the western gaze on the

uncivilized other. The dominant story of postcolonial ethnic minority groups perpetuates

cultural dis-ease, leaving those affected trapped in their own cultural self-loathing. Many

writers including ethnic woman writers have begun to explore the curing of cultural self-

loathing and collective self-hate by means of story-telling ceremonies (Wilentz, p. 4).

Writers like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, and Sandra Jackson-Opoku use

literature as a means by which to reconstruct their cultural identities, mourn their trauma

and reconstruct “discredited” or nonacademic knowledges (Wilentz, p. 27). By

reconstructing ways of knowing through these healing discourses, these writers achieve

insight into their cultural dis-ease by examining the insidious ways in which this kind of

dis-ease is constructed within the hegemonic social structures.


Narrative offers its narrator insight in to her dominant story and allows the

narrator to retell this story in her own words. In the case of ethnic minorities, this means

using non-western language. This is because narrative and its transformative function

can become “consolatory figuration” (Santner, p. 23). This function of narrative is

essential in surviving loss; not only of our initial loss of the Mother, but of all subsequent

forms of fragmentation. I emphasizes that narrative can serve to deconstruct the

dominant narrative, give voice to grief, and allow reconstruction of a new self and

culture. The suggestion here is not that narrative puts the fragmented self or culture back

to the way it was, cultural illness and fragmentation is too complex for that. Wilentz

explores the complexities addressing cultural illness through wellness narratives stating:

Still, as evidence from the complexities of cultural illness in contemporary

society, we can’t just “go back” to earlier, utopian notions of health through

traditional practices. Moreover, as these wellness narratives point out, there is no

specific formula for cultural healing. Still, envisioning health in this manner may

also function as a counterhegemonic tool to breakdown the self-hate that comes

from the prejudice and oppression as well as the limitations of binary thinking

about culture and health. (Wilentz, p. 170)

Narrative offers reconstruction, but only in the context of the present. It cannot

undo the fragmented cultural identities that are the legacy of historical suffering.

Narrative instead empowers its author to recognize the self-hate that is experienced as

part of her place in the dominant story and to turn the self-hate into acceptance. It can

also transform cultural self-loathing into an identity embraced. By extension, when these

cultural wellness narratives are written in the form of a novel its therapeutic effects reach

beyond the author and can mirror a culture of wellness to its readership.

The novel, according to Terry Eagleton, represents a consolation for the cultural

and communal destruction that was the price of “progress” (Eagleton, 2008). It is fitting


then that many ethnic minority writers use the novel and its sustained narrative for

therapeutic purposes. The novel, unlike a journal or diary is intended to be read by a

larger audience. It is the audience’s participation that Toni Morrison believes permits

access to healing and rediscovery within a culture. It also provides a window through

which cultures defined by hegemonic ideals can understand their historical contribution

to the cultural dis-ease of marginalized peoples. Toni Morrison describes her cultural

healing narratives as taking “improvisation and audience participation into account.” As

opposed to being authoritative text, Morrison’s work, is what she refers to as a map

(1984, p. 389). She goes on to say:

If they have any success, it will be in transferring the problem of

fathoming to the presumably adult reader, to the inner circle of

listeners. At the least they have distributed the weight of these

problematical questions to a larger constituency, and justified the

public exposure of a privacy. If the conspiracy that the opening

words announce is entered into by the reader, then the book can be

seen to open with its close: a speculation on the disruption of

“nature,” as being a social disruption with tragic individual

consequences in which the reader, as part of the population of the

text, is implicated. (1988, p. 29)

Narrative empowers the individual to reconstruct her culture, experience an

individual identity as well as experience therapeutic catharsis or emotional release

through its process. For other individuals within the cultural community, reading these

types of narratives (such as a novel) entails witnessing (Carey & Russell, 2003)the

writers’ experiences; it is the sharing of the insights of the narrative, which can result in

collective reflection and perpetuate individual and collective catharsis (Feuchtwang,

1987), (Moreno, 1943). The individual act of narrative is inherently intersubjective, and

once read it becomes participatory. Narrative therapy functions as a witnessing, and a

reconstructive understanding that offers a means of healing to the reader:


By presenting wellness narratives that attempt to integrate the

concept of cultural illness/health into the cathartic aspects of the

novel, these works aim to revision the social structures of our lives

through a discourse that begins to reintegrate the cultural self into

our concepts of identity in this fragmented, postmodern age.

(Wilentz, 2000, p. 169)

So while the individual practices narrative on her own, it is ultimately collective,

dialogical process of engagement with family and perhaps even oppressors both directly

and indirectly.

Thoughts on Integration by Theory Expansion

In this paper, I have argued that traditional cultural ways of life can point us to a

means of alleviating cultural dis-ease. Specifically, I have explored how the benefits of

traditional narrative can be expanded in a postcolonial context. By examining how

narrative is beneficial individually and culturally, I have highlighted the innately

therapeutic nature of narrative. In understanding how the complex and traumatic way we

become speaking subjects we know that language can be representative of both death and

rebirth. Our birth into the symbolic order and therefore into sociocultural existence

represents a loss of a utopian and unattainable existence. However, our language and

cultural values endow us with the ability to negotiate with and experience our existence.

Many ancient cultures have used language through narration and confession as a

way to heal the wounds which language ceaselessly opens. These traditions and values

were lost, fragmented by colonialism and the binary oppositions that emerge from of The

Age of Enlightenment, leaving postcolonial cultures in a state of self-loathing and dis-

ease. The emergence of cultural dis-ease then is a result of reciprocal causality. Stuart

Henry and Nicole L. Bracy define reciprocal causality as an instance in which causes and

events are intertwined so that they are a part of each other (Henry & Bracy, 2012).


Identifying these primordial and historical events and their interconnection was only

possible through an interdisciplinary examination, like that which I have presented in this

essay.

Moreover, it is only by integration by theory expansion, such that I have applied

here, that common ground has been constructed, the modified insights have achieved a

more comprehensive understanding (Tayler, p. 45). Through theory expansion we can

recognize the value of traditional non-disciplinary knowledges and the importance of

these knowledges on individual wellness and cultural identity. Disciplinary theories of

psychoanalysis, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, anthropology, mourning and trauma

as well as critical discourse analysis have highlighted the reciprocal causality that creates

cultural dis-ease. Theory expansion presents the curative potential of narrative within the

context of dis-ease. Cultural dis-ease is complex because it is a culmination of historical

events that have impacted all dimensions of reality. To address dis-ease from any single

discipline would be to perpetuate the harmful impact of the scientific method and binary

oppositions which I argue contributed to the dis-ease.

Narrative recognizes interconnectedness, it transcends disciplinary boundaries,

blurring the arbitrary lines and presenting a larger and more comprehensive picture.

While narrative is neither a simple nor permanent cure for cultural dis-ease, narrative

certainly is an empowering tool as a part of an ongoing, intersubjective process of

healing. Narrative empowers members of a historically despised group to retell and

reconstruct their dominant stories as they deserve to be told. Through this process both

the self and the culture can be reconstructed and, as a result, self-loathing and dis-ease

can be alleviated.


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