Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

Psychological Repair: The Intersubjective Dialogue of Remorse and Forgiveness in the Aftermath of Gross Human Rights Violations.

The possibility of psychological repair after mass trauma is considered here in the context of the global trend of dialogue between survivors and perpetrators in the aftermath of mass atrocities. Stories of remorse and forgiveness illustrate and allow reflection on the last two decades’ experience in dealing with the past, as exemplified by truth commissions in countries like South Africa and Rwanda. Three aspects of this experience are stressed. First, it is argued that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of South Africa was a unique dialogic space that enabled the emergence of new subjectivities in the encounter between survivors and perpetrators. Second, concepts of intersubjectivity are used to explore how a psychoanalytic perspective might contribute to understanding the process of trauma testimony, and to examine the different ways in which empathy plays out in survivors’ and perpetrators’ responses as witnesses to trauma testimony. A key element here is the aspect of concern and care for the other that is linked to the empathy-remorse-forgiveness cycle in the dialogue between victim and perpetrator. Finally, remorse and its relation to forgiveness are explored. Contextually rich case study material from research on forgiveness illustrates this discussion.

Intersubjectivity and Embodiment: Exploring the Role of the Maternal in the Language of Forgiveness and Reconciliation

In this essay, I draw from the public testimonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and argue, from a constructionist perspective, that the stories that women survivors brought to the TRC were stories of healing and reconciliation. I explore how gender and the maternal body might be central in shaping this discourse of forgiveness and reconciliation—in other words, not only how processes of reconciliation may be gendered but also how they may be embodied.

Gendered Violence: Continuities and Transformation in the Aftermath of Conflict in Africa

This thematic cluster of essays, titled “Gendered Violence: Continuities and Transformation in the Aftermath of Conflict in Africa,” focuses on the continuities between regimes of violence during organized political conflict and persisting violence against women in the postconflict era of democratic governance. The genesis for this collection evolved out of an international symposium organized by the first author of this introduction, in August 2011. The aim of the symposium was to explore African women’s experiences in the aftermath of mass violence and genocide—both in terms of their victimhood and their agency—and their positioning in the broader context of their social, cultural, and political engagement after the official ending of hostilities. In this introduction, we consider the multiple violations that women have suffered in recent conflicts and genocide on the African continent, and which they continue to suffer long after the violent conflict has ended. We explore the plurality of women’s experiences in the wake of political violence and in its aftermath—their simultaneous experiences of trauma and victimhood, their agency and empowerment, and their solidarity in standing together in their woundedness to rebuild their communities.

‘Selves’ in contradiction: Power and powerlessness in South African shelter residents’ narratives of leaving abusive heterosexual relationships

South Africa has one of the most advanced constitutions in the world. Several progressive laws that promise the protection of women, including the Domestic Violence Act, and a range of state-funded bodies have been established to promote women’s rights. Despite these signs of transition to democracy in the post-apartheid era, violence against women remains problematically high. The dominant perspective in both South African and international literature on the high rate of violence against women has been that of women’s ‘powerlessness’. This article goes beyond approaches that emphasise women’s victimhood. It explores women’s agency from the perspective of the narratives of 16 women in two shelters in Cape Town. Drawing from Scott’s (1990) concept of power and resistance, and using a feminist poststructuralist analytic lens, the article provides insight into the complexity of women’s subjectivities ‘post-abuse’. It highlights women’s shifting sense of power in relation to their abusers, and how this imbued women with a sense of agency as seen through their retrospective accounts of their motivations to leave the abusive relationships.

Empathy and moral emotions in post-apartheid South Africa: an fMRI investigation

Abstract Moral emotions elicited in response to others’ suffering are mediated by empathy and affect how we respond to their pain. South Africa provides a unique opportunity to study group processes given its racially divided past. The present study seeks insights into aspects of the moral brain by investigating behavioral and functional MRI responses of White and Black South Africans who lived through apartheid to in- and out-group physical and social pain. Whereas the physical pain task featured faces expressing dynamic suffering, the social pain task featured victims of apartheid violence from the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission to elicit heartfelt emotion. Black participants’ behavioral responses were suggestive of in-group favoritism, whereas White participants’ responses were apparently egalitarian. However, all participants showed significant in-group biases in activation in the amygdala (physical pain), as well as areas involved in mental state representation, including the precuneus, temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and frontal pole (physical and social pain). Additionally, Black participants reacted with heightened moral indignation to own-race suffering, whereas White participants reacted with heightened shame to Black suffering, which was associated with blunted neural empathic responding. These findings provide ecologically valid insights into some behavioral and brain processes involved in complex moral situations.

Empathy, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa

Empathy and forgiveness are complex constructs, with several questions about their nature unresolved. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) provides a useful exemplar with which to think about these constructs. This chapter explores the history of the TRC from a psychological perspective, noting key psychological questions that it raises. First, it addresses the question of whether apartheid left enduring psychological scars or contributed to resilience. Second, it asks the question of how best to provide survivors of gross human rights violations with psychological care. Third, it explores the nature of perpetrators of societal evil. Finally, it suggests that a better understanding of the psychobiological underpinnings of empathy may shed light on these complex issues.

An Exploration of German Subjectivity Three Generations after the End of World War Two

This qualitative study aimed to explore how grandchildren of Second-World-War-generation Germans talk about and make meaning of their national past. Operating from a social constructionist stance, semistructured individual narrative/biographical interviews were conducted to collect the data. These constructed narratives were analyzed drawing on intersubjective psychoanalytic theory to identify the relational affective investments (organizing principles) that implicitly influenced the discursive positions that seven third-generation post-War Germans—six participants and the researcher—assumed in conversation with one another. Four predominant positions emerged from the analytical process: the default German, the bad/ashamed German, the defensive German, and the good German. The results revealed a complex and layered German subjectivity. The nature of this self-structure indicates that the third-generation post-War Germans involved in this research experience significant adverse emotional effects in relatio...

Acting Out and Working Through Traumatic Memory: Confronting the Past in the South African Context

This article draws on experiences from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and explores mainly two dimensions of memory in the postapartheid context: the acting out of traumatic memory and the working through of both trauma and guilt. In the first part of the article, the case of so-called necklace murders that characterized violent antiapartheid demonstrations during the 1980s is discussed. Drawing from social psychology and psychoanalytic perspectives, the discussion offers an interpretation of the necklace murders as an example of collective traumatic memory playing itself out in repetition transgenerationally through acts of violence—as a manifestation of the acting out, or reenactment, of collective trauma. The second part of the article is drawn from data based on research that examines White students’ responses to TRC testimonies presented in a master’s graduate seminar on trauma. The discussion in this section brings a Black mother’s testimony at the TRC public hearings about the loss of her only child into dialogue with a student’s response to the mother’s testimony. The article argues that, viewed as a representation of postapartheid second-generation dialogic encounter between young White South Africans and the apartheid past, using TRC testimonies in this way may open up the possibility of the transgenerational transmission of empathy.

‘They dug up wounds’: University of the Free State students’ experiences of transformation and integration in campus residences

ABSTRACT This article seeks to illuminate the deeper and complex dimensions of post-apartheid transformation by examining how University of the Free State (UFS) undergraduate students experienced racial integration within campus residences. Data were drawn from a sample of 17 individual semi-structured in-depth narrative interviews with student participants. Three emergent themes (a) conceptualizing transformation, (b) racial diversity vs. relational unity, and (c) discourses of openness and possibility are presented. Drawing from the framework of Contact Theory, the article discusses how the three themes inform the nature of contact in post-conflict contexts and, specifically, UFS as an exemplar of a South African historically white university.

Forgiveness is ‘the wrong word’: Empathic Repair and the Potential for Human Connection in the Aftermath of Historical Trauma

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela argues that much of what happens in dialogue encounters between victims and perpetrators remains implicit. She contends that the word ‘forgiveness,’ which is used by victims themselves to describe their change of heart toward perpetrators, falls short of adequately capturing the complex and multi-layered process that unfolds when victims—and perpetrators—experience a change of heart toward each other. Taking a relational and intersubjective perspective, she argues that empathy is at the heart of the shifts that unfold in the victim-perpetrator dialogue, and that the phrase ‘empathic repair’ more accurately defines the response that emerges than forgiveness does. First-hand experiences and interviews serve to illustrate Gobodo-Madikizela’s position.