STORYTELLING, EMOTIONS AND

EMPATHY

Daniela Gachago

Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Context / background

Aim:

Reflect on journey to become teachers

Raise awareness of social issues in education

Engage with / facilitate diverse classrooms

Create digital stories as teaching materials

Transformation in HE

Transformation in

Higher Education has

led to racially

integrated classrooms

Social and cultural

integration are lagging

behind (Jansen 2010,

Soudien 2012)

Talking difference, talking race

South African classrooms are ticking time bombs

Desire / necessity to talk / engage with these issues

‘In a country that is oversensitive to race talk, few

young people or adults feel comfortable talking about

race, especially when they have to speak about

personal experience ‘ (Jansen 2010: 10)

Pedagogy of discomfort

Stipulates that for both

educators and students to

develop a deeper

understanding for their own

and their shared past, it is

necessary to move outside

their comfort zone, to start to

unpack their understanding

of norms and differences (Boler 1999, Boler and Zembylas 2003).

Cognitive and emotional labour

To engage in critical inquiry often means asking students to radically re-evaluate their world views. This process can incur feelings of anger, grief, disappointment, and resistance, but the process also offers students new windows on the world: to develop the capacity for critical inquiry regarding the production and construction of differences gives people a tool that will be useful over their lifetime. In short, this pedagogy of discomfort requires not only cognitive but emotional labor. (Boler and Zembylas

2003: 110)

Pedagogy of possibility

Result of pedagogy of discomfort: negative

emotional labour such as vulnerability, anger,

suffering.

Emotional labour can produce favourable

results, including self-discovery, hope, passion

an a sense of community.

PHD focus

2013 Train-The-Trainer workshop

9 students

Everybody

has a story to

tell

Image from Flickr by whateverything (CC)

Give

marginalised,

silent people a

voice

Story circle

“Stories move in circles. They don’t move in

straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles.

There are stories inside stories and stories

between stories, and finding your way through

them is as easy and as hard as finding your

way home. And part of the finding is getting

lost. And when you’re lost, you start to look

around and listen.”(Lambert 2010, v).

Critical texts and dialogue

Dialogue is focused conversation, engaged in intentionally with the goal of increasing understanding, addressing problems, and questioning thoughts or actions. It engages the heart as well as the mind. It is different from ordinary, everyday conversation, in that dialogue has a focus and a purpose. Dialogue is different from debate, which offers two points of view with the goal of proving the legitimacy or correctness of one of the viewpoints over the other. Dialogue, unlike debate or even discussion, is as interested in the relationship(s) between the participants as it is in the topic or theme being explored.Ultimately, real dialogue presupposes an openness to modify deeply held convictions (Romney 1996: 1)

Counter-storytelling

‘challenge social and racial injustice by

listening to and learning from experiences of

racism and resistance, despair and hope at the

margins of society’ (Yosso 2006: 171).

PHD in School of Education at

UCTWhat is the potential of a digital storytelling workshop as a process and a product to facilitate an engagement across difference within a post-conflict pedagogical framework?

1. What do the small stories told in these dialogical spaces tell us about how students construct notions of difference, how they position themselves towards each other and towards hegemonic discourses?

2. To what extent do the storytelling spaces during the workshop as part of the digital storytelling process facilitate an engagement across difference and in particular what is the potential of this process to elicit empathy and witnessing from the audience?

3. What do the digital stories as product of the workshop tell us about how students position and re-position themselves in terms of difference and what is the potential of this process to elicit empathy and witnessing from the audience?

Studies on digital storytelling and

difference

Lots of engagement around digital storytelling and difference

Less focus on difference & critical theory

Only two references on digital storytelling & counter-storytelling

Rolon-Dow (2011): Race(ing) stories: digital storytelling as a tool for critical race scholarship

Vaseduvan (2006): Making Known Differently: engaging visual modalities as spaces to author new selves

Very positive reception

Potential of non-experts to create complex

multimedia products (Hull and Katz 2006)

Sharability / publishability

Giving marginalised voices a forum

Breaking of culture of silence (Thumbran

2010)

Own research

It is interesting to note that the students who participated in the digital storytelling approach came away with a deeper understanding of one another’s ethnic, racial and socio-economic backgrounds. The knowledge about other students enhanced the understanding and respect for one another in the class. The situation gave a practical example of what and how they would handle diverse classrooms when they begin their teaching career next year. (Condy et al 2012)

The study has showed the extent to which students essentialise race, identify along racial background lines and construct identities in opposition to each other, confirming findings of previous research (Leibovitz et al., 2010, Pattman, 2010; Rohleder et al., 2008; Bozalek, 2011). However, it has also showed how indirect knowledge (as Jansen (2009) calls it) that is passed on from generation to generation and still impacts on students‟ social engagements can come to the surface through these disruptive moments of sharing and listening openly to each other‟s stories, and may constitute a first step to transform students‟ engagements with one another. (Gachago et al 2014)

Narrow genre

‘as a cultural form it is marked by a fairly

predictable, if not uniform, range of ways to

represent the self’ (Burgess 2006, 209)

Poletti argues ‘that the specific narrative strategies

of the digital storytelling form present significant

barriers against digital storytelling being used as a

means of redefining or challenging existing

meanings attached to life experience, given its

emphasis on narrative accessibility, closure, and

coherence of theme (Poletti 2011).

Sentimentality in DST

‘Somewhat paradoxically from a critical

perspective, it is the very qualities that mark

digital stories as uncool, conservative, and

ideologically suspect – ‘stock’ tropes,

nostalgia, even sentimentality – that give them

the power of social connectivity, while the

sense of authentic self-expression that

they convey lowers the barriers to

empathy.‘ (Burgess 2006:10)

Finally…

The seven story elements, as guides for

participating in digital storytelling (and the

‘stuff’ its participants consume), coax life

narratives in such a way as to encourage

individuals to shape their heterogeneous

experiences into stories of personal

reflection on these dominant themes. (Poletti 2011).

The power of personal storytelling lies in its

potential to allow affective connection between

storyteller and storylistener (Amy Shuman 2005)

Are some stories more capable than other to

elicit empathy? (Frank 2010)

What kind of empathy do they elicit? (Boler 1999)

Theoretical framework

Affective turn - Sara Ahmed (2004) What do emotions do?

Emotions as relational / social practices

Attached to bodies

‘comfort is the effect of bodies being able to ‘sink’ into spaces, that have already taken their shape. Discomfort is not simply a choice or decision – ‘I felt uncomfortable about this or that’ – but an effect of bodies inhabiting spaces that do not take or ‘extend’ their shape.’ (Ahmed 2004: 152)

The ‘Other’

Iris Marion Young (1997)

Asymmetrical Reciprocity: we cant put ourselves in somebody else’s shoes

A temporal dimension, by which she refers to the kind of experiences that we have made in life, that make us unique and which cannot allow us to know the other or understand the other’s standpoint in life

And our social position in life, which is linked to issues of power and oppression and does not allow a symmetric reciprocity with the other

Amy Shuman and the limits of

empathy

Both the personal and the

collective story can be

legitimizing categories

that provide meaning and

pattern to life, but

traversing the terrain

between the personal and

the collective can be

fraught with obstacles to

understanding. (2004: 55)

Empathy

‘Empathy preserves a distance between those

who understand and those who experience

trauma: witnessing troubles that distance, and

while it does not necessarily close the

distance, it transforms the distance enough for

the witness to be part of the constituency of

sufferer… empathy can produce alienation’ (Shuman 2004: 144, emphasis added).

Sentimentality

The ordinary becomes precious, and as we

know well, the precious is the most dangerous

of representations; it is always precariously

close to the trivial, just as its counterpart, the

extraordinary, is precariously close to scandal.

The ethnography of suffering requires a

critique of empathy, an understanding of

representation that represents emotion as

neither trivial nor scandalous’ (Shuman 2004: 150)

Destabilising empathy

when a personal story travels beyond the

original story setting and is used as an

allegory for a collective experience

entitlement claims are made that challenge

sentimentalizing allegories which in turn

undermine empathy – as she argues often as

alibis for failure of empathy (personal narrative

to similar to collective)

Narrative inquiry

Arthur W. Frank 2010:

Letting stories breathe: A socio-narratology (2010)

Dialogical Narrative Analysis (DNA)

Stories seen as actors / stories do…

Having certain capabilities

Focus on relationship between story, storyteller and storylistener: ‘The storyteller gives breath to the story, but the story is already there, waiting.’

5 Questions of DNA

Resources: What narrative resources can storyteller draw from? What resources shape how the story is being told and comprehended? How are resources distributed?

Circulation: To whom is the story told, who can understand story and who can’t?

Affiliation: Who does the story render external or other to that group?

Identity: What identity is performed/constructed, what are possibilities to change? Or remain the same? What identity is claimed, rejected, experimented with?

What is at stake: Who is holding her/his own? Who is made more vulnerable by the story?

How did I chose my stories?

Frank (2010: 43): ‘the analyst’s cultivated

capacity to hear, from the total collection of

stories, those that call out as needing to be

written about.’

‘Narrative analysis gives increased audibility to

some stories, recasts how other stories are

understood, and necessarily neglects many

stories.’ (50)

Lauren’s and Noni’s story

Capabilities of stories

Stories choose us

Stories make us uncomfortable

Stories go under our skin

Stories move us

Stories trouble power dynamics

Stories are out of control

Stories connect the personal and the political

Stories open spaces for wonder and respect

Stories connect us

Daniela: What were the reactions of people or how did you perceived them?

Lauren: Shocked! But also like they felt with me, there was no judgement and I knew I expected judgement. I was ready to like put it all out and then when people just looked like they had empathy and they didn’t pity me, you know? They just felt with me in the moment that made me like ready to just share more!

Daniela: Why do you think they didn’t judge you?

Lauren: I don’t know I think because we clarified that it’s a space that was safe to say anything and just to be yourself …and the people in our group fortunately where people who are very open and diverse and …well I don’t know if they all were, but they are now at least you know …and I think they would have felt silly to judge me because it was a space where we all just kind of connected with each other -even for a moment you know?

Stories make us see the ‘other’

Christine: Because I am comfortable being white and I am comfortable speaking English I am comfortable with my whiteness and I only realised when Noni was talking about it how white people unconsciously make black people feel. I had to leave the room to go to the bathroom had a good cry in the bathroom and then splash my face with cold water and then come back to class. And that’s why my nose was blocked when I did my recording because that was the day I did my recording but at the same time I was thinking about Noni’s discomfort.

Christine: I would actually almost want to give Noni the credit, she made me realise that we are all the same, we are all the same, we all feel the same. And again told me, in my mind, I was thinking: But you can make the difference! You can be the one to take the first step! Because this workshop showed us, that article actually showed me, where my weakness is. And it’s noted, I am not hesitant. It’s not that I don’t trust black people. It’s just that I have never thought of them as being intimate, somebody to be intimate with on a very close terms with. That’s, that’s about it. I can’t say, I can’t say, that I don’t want black people in my life but the course made me more aware that they have feelings. And then maybe there’s something that stops them from approaching me. But maybe they can see something in me that stops them from approaching me and making the first contact. It should come from me - you know? I can make it happen.

Stories make us see our

sameness

Stories make us see shared

experience

I was thinking about my father who was a poor white who was not welcome in wealthy people’s homes. Even in his own family extended family, a boy was given a chocolate wrapper and was thinking there was a piece of chocolate in it. He found nothing, only a little strips of melted chocolates which he is still licked in the street and afterwards he realised what he had done or what. He was: It’s like, I don’t know how to explain it, it’s like such total rejection and that’s what went through my mind for the whole of that day. I was out of it, all of it for the whole of that day. I was just thinking about the things we do to reject other people. Some people do it explicitly and some people don’t…What do we do as whites to make people feel like they’re nothing?

Daniela: And you’ve never thought about this before?

Christine : No! I’ve never thought of the black/white issues never!

Stories move people

Thando: I was telling her [Lauren] about the story, her story… and then she said to me: You know what? The day I was telling my story you cried and then I noticed… and then she said: I knew those tears were not for nothing! I said: Hell no, you saw me very well (laughing)… yeah because I was living a lie and then I thought, if Lauren can be so, so brave about her sexuality, revealing about her sexuality in class and with her family, why I can’t I do it? Because I know one thing about me and my family…because of my education status I am more powerful than them. And I was thinking: if I reveal my sexuality and then they say: We disown you, I don’t care! I can survive on my own. And then from there I think the other day I sent my sister an sms. And then I told her about this sexuality of mine.

Daniela: You have said a lot of tough emotions [came up] is it?

Lauren: Yeah it is so overwhelming... (laughs)

Daniela: Would have expected something like that?

Lauren: No! Not at all not at all! People that I would never have guessed have been emailing me and messaging me the whole morning I have been talking to this one guy …

Daniela: In your class ?

Lauren: In our class yeahh, he has been emailing me like, telling me, he doesn’t know what to do with his feelings emm yeah …

Stories make us uncomfortable

Daniela: So which of these stories affected you the most?

Christine: Lauren! Because I am homophobic…

Daniela: So listening to Lauren’s story what does that make you ...?

Christine: Ohhh, inside I was like screaming. I think [name of student] was the one who told me quite a long time ago that she’s like this. But I didn’t believe a thing until I heard it out of the horse’s mouth. Oh my god and then she asked me to read her story and then she said: Did you know this about me? And I just swallowed this big lump and I said: No, it’s the first time I hear of it. And I had to like: Ohhhhhh, keep it in this morning.

Daniela: Ok emm so what were the most uncomfortable moments for you in that process?

Lauren: Emm when Noni showed those photos of where she comes from. I felt not guilty but in a sense guilty, because I mean, I can’t help that am white. But I don’t know the way that they have lived, it’s not their fault either but that’s just how they live… so it was this kind of confusion of how has this happened? How do some people have to live like that and I lived so comfortably? And it made me made guilty in a sense, even though I am not in control of the fact that I was born as I am you know? And I just felt angrier as well because it was like, I could see that the other black people in the room where going: That’s where we live too, you know, it’s not a big deal! And the white people going: Ooooh shame! Like that it’s horrible you know and it made me feel so uncomfortable in that moment.

Stories make us defensive

Sadika: I felt like: Well, everybody has their own opinion. And I just feel like: Yes, that happened. But it happened a long time ago. And it’s like, the generation that implemented Apartheid has died out. And people are living the way they’re living because of themselves. They also have to remember, they vote for the same president every year and that president has made no change. Yes, they have the power and the money to make the most change in the country, yet it isn’t. So why do why do people get the blame because of the past when we’ve had we’ve been democratic for almost 10 years? For more than 10 years! I also understand where she’s coming from, I truly understand, but I think African people are not the only people who suffer. Like coloured people also suffered and I mean if you go to other areas in Mitchells Plain… I don’t live in that area but if you go further in you’ll see, you have gangsters and people, coloured people, also live in shacks. They’re also waiting for the same opportunities as others. But I think the story just focuses on their race. I understand why - because she is who she is, but I think she should have broaden it because more than one race suffered.

Christine: She asked me to walk down to the

Main Road with her for snacks and I thought:

Wohhh! This is unusual - she doesn’t

approach me for anything. But so far we’ve

had long talks about the GEP file we’ve have

to do for Janet. And now she asked me to go

down to the Main Road with her. She’s just a

normal girl. While I know she’s gay - I don’t

see she’s gay.

First conclusions

‘Empathy is one kind of obligation, sometimes

creating a possibility for understanding across

differences, sometimes involving sentimentality,

sometimes romanticising tragedy as inspiration,

but in any case deeply compromising the

relationship between tellers and listeners’ (Shuman

2004: 20)

People become the stories they tell (Frank

2010)

Stories are out of control

Have the potential but usually do not

trouble power dynamics

They can render us vulnerable or help us

hide our vulnerability (Butler 2004, 2009)

Difficulty of negotiate the personal and the

political

‘One is undone, in the face of the other, by the

touch, by the scent, by the feel, by the

prospect of the touch, by the memory of the

feel. We are touched by stories we tell.’ (Butler

2004: 24)

Critical emotional reflexivity

….a process of using emotions as catalysts, to

allow the questioning of beliefs and

assumptions, exposing privilege and comfort

zones, with the aim for learners to find new

ways of being with the ‘Other’, and ultimately

leading to transformed ‘relationships,

practices, and enactments that benefit

teaching and learning for peace, mutual

understanding, and reconciliation’

(Zembylas 2011: 2)

Noni: I don’t know if I agree too much but for me I thought it would have brought us closer than we are I mean I don’t know if we can all be honest it has as much as we talked to each other every now and then it hasn’t been personal relationships (emmm) as we I thought it will be after that intense week and I still talk more to these guys and I believe am gonna correct me if am wrong you guys still talk to the people you talk to in the group (emm) so I would say just a tiny bit because or may be not I don’t know.

Faith: But may be that was just your expected outcome (emmm) may be that wasn’t...

Noni: From the intensity of the week that’s what I thought it would do emm that’s what am saying may be I live in dream land.

Christine: No I feel there has been more of a connection I don’t know if its just me but I have tried to ….

Faith : Not in terms of actual personal relationship

Lauren: That’s also like we’ve been here for four years I mean we have our friends you know we have our friendship groups just because it might be a race thing or something it doesn’t mean that we’re not building relationships with other people we just stuck to our original friend groups and that’s emmm

Faith : And I think its also your definition of a friend (emm) like we can’t all have five hundred friends like real genuine friends (emmm) and I don’t know if that’s what you are talking about on ehhh.

Noni: Emmmm

Open questions

Difficulties / impossibility (?) to step out of somebody’s emotional habitus/practices / pull of comfort zones

Difficult to recognise the ‘other’ as ‘other’ in Young’s sense

Temptations to make someone the same / connect / look for similarities in experience

How can we love the other that is distant?

Maria Lugones’(1987:5-7): can students learn to ‘love each other by learning to travel to each other’s “worlds”’?

What to do with silences?

Awareness of topologies and capabilities of

stories

‘Naming types of narratives can help people

think about what story they are telling what

story they want to tell. Naming narrative types

can authorize the telling of particular stories,

and it also can liberate people from stories

they no longer want to tell.’ (Frank 2010: 118)

Dialogue is not ‘academic intervention’. In fact, dialogue is not a theoretical exercise at all. There may be room for these things but they are called something else—debate, discussion, argument—NOT dialogue.

What is dialogue then?

Above all, dialogue involves uncertainty. It is an investigation of something you do not know with one or more persons who also do/es not know. Dialogue is therefore a risk: rather than pounding yourself on the chest because you are so intensely extraordinary, or, wanting to pound someone else on the head because they are so agonisingly ordinary, dialogue rarely goes according to plan. Dialogue is three D’s; Delicate, Difficult and Desirable.

(Minna Salami aka MsAfropolitan, Nov 10th 2014)

We must not see any person as an

abstraction. Instead, we must see in

every person a universe with its own

secrets, with its own treasures, with its

own sources of anguish and with some

measure of triumph. - Elie Wiesel

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Acknowledgement

Facilitators of 2013 ISP Digital Storytelling

project

NRF staff development grant

NRF CPUT Digital Storytelling Project