Response-art as reflective inquiry: Fostering awareness of racism. (September 2018) - Leclerc, Josée
Highlights: Drawings created in concentration camps trigger emotional overload or distancing in viewers. Response art by viewers fosters the development of a witnessing function. Reflecting on the concepts of internal and external racism facilitates insight. Consciousness of internal and external racism facilitates awareness of cultural difference. Ethical issues must be considered when using images of trauma in research. Abstract: Drawings produced in the camps by deportees during the holocaust, or Shoah, provide compelling evidence of the human capacity for violence and destruction. Yet these images also bear witness to the persistence of the forces of life and the survival of the creative impulse. This article discusses the process of witnessing these images of trauma. A closed-group workshop was designed to facilitate some consciousness of external and internal dimensions of racial discrimination. Inscribed within the realm of postmemory work the workshop format invites participants to respond to presented drawings from the Ravensbrück concentration camp through visual image-making. In this report of the research undertaken, the context in which the workshop was conceived is firstly considered. Secondly, the research method, including important ethical considerations are described, and results from the thematic analysis presented. Themes related to strong emotional reactions triggered by viewing the drawings and visually responding to them and to different levels of insights are discussed. Implications of results for postmemorial work, awareness of racism and as well as for the development of social justice and equity principles are presented.