Listening as activism: Re-thinking resilience and justice-doing as a response to trauma

Abstract

Just as language is political, so too is the way we listen to people. Our listening shapes the way we witness and respond to others and the stories of life that are co-constructed in the process. Co-constructing resiliences includes returning the gaze on the political and social contexts in which harm to people takes place. In the process, we explore listening practices associated with therapeutic activism (D'Arrigo-Patrick et al., 2017) and the generative potential offered by tuning into the meanings people attribute to their responses to violence and how people do resilience in their lives offers. We will demonstrate how our work with a family has led us to think about how we can all be jointly sustained in the work by making moments and practices of resistance and resilience visible. We will explore how these practices can enhance a sense of personal agency and create experiences of vicarious resilience (Hernandez-Wolfe, 2018) that help people access more possibilities in their lives.