Working with People Who Have Experienced State Violence
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THE ART OF REMEMBERING: IRANIAN POLITICAL PRISONERS, RESISTANCE AND COMMUNITY by Bethany J. Osborne A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto © Copyright by Bethany J. Osborne 2014 The Art of Remembering: Iranian Political Prisoners, Resistance and Community Bethany J. Osborne Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education University of Toronto ABSTRACT Over the last three decades, many women and men who were political prisoners in the Middle East have come to Canada as immigrants and refugees. In their countries of origin, they resisted oppressive social policies, ideologies, and various forms of state violence. Their journeys of forced migration/exile took them away from their country, families, and friends, but they arrived in Canada with memories of violence, resistance and survival. These former political prisoners did not want the sacrifices that they and their colleagues had made to be forgotten. They needed to find effective ways to communicate these stories. This research was conducted from a critical feminist‒anti-racist perspective, and used life history research to trace the journey of one such group of women and men. This group of former political prisoners has been meeting together, using art as a mode of expression to share their experiences, inviting others to join their resistance against state violence. Interviews were conducted with former political prisoners and their supporters and artist facilitators who were part of the art workshops, performances, and exhibits held in Toronto, Canada from January 2010 through December 2011. This dissertation examines the importance of memory projects and of remembering in acts of public testimony and the significance of providing spaces for others to bear witness to those stories. This research also contributes to the body of knowledge about the role that remembering, consciousness, and praxis play in individual and community recovery, rebuilding community, and continued resistance. ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to the women and men in Iran, in Canada, and around the world who chose to open their eyes to see injustice, to work tirelessly to make this world a place where all people had equal access to resources, and who were willing to make sacrifices to make this possible. Your lives and stories stand as testimonies to what is possible when we choose to resist violence. iii iiiii i11 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS They say that it takes a village to raise a child and, in the case of a PhD dissertation, it is not much different. Although I was the one who conducted the research and wrote the dissertation, I am indebted to a large community of people for their support of me and of the process, and for the many ways in which people cared for me. I am so thankful for my fellow students and the faculty members whose presence has served to give me a sense of home in the Adult Education and Community Development Program at OISE/UT. I also want to sincerely thank current and former staff members of the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education—in particular Susan Hall, Jennifer O’Reilly, and Todd Will—who have been sounding boards and essential guides through the bureaucracy that is the University of Toronto. I am so thankful for the members of my committee: Tara Goldstein, Minelle Mahtani, Jamie Magnussen, Solveiga Miezitis and Jennifer Sumner. Thank you for walking with me through this journey, and for giving me important guidance and critical feedback. Many thanks as well to Nancy Taber for her contribution to the process. To the women and men of the Words, Colour, Movement project who allowed me to bear witness to the process of their remembering, their art making, and their resistance, thank you for being willing to try new things, for answering my questions, and for inviting me to be a part of an exciting community. Your strength and courage as students and young people in Iran in the 1970s and 1980s, and your willingness to testify to the atrocities you experienced and to continue to resist state violence humbles me. Thank you for your example. I have been blessed with wonderful friends who have supported me in so many ways in what has been a long journey. Thank you for the colour and light you bring to my life, for supporting me on this journey. Thank you for asking me questions, for being genuinely interested in what I was doing and what I was learning. Thank you for providing me with spaces to create, for feeding me, for giving me distractions when I needed them, and for teaching me what it means to be loved and accepted. Without your presence in my life, I am sure that this dissertation would not be what it is, and I would not be who I am: Erin Beettam, Michelle Briffett, Sara DeMoor, Jennifer Knight, Mary Reddish, Sandra Seaborn, Syd and Joanne Sytsma, LeAnne Thorfinnson, Heather & Darrell VanLaare, and Ann & Lydell Andree Wiebe. Special thanks to Zetta Elliot, a sounding board and encourager, who has taught me through example that it is important to follow your dreams. I am also indebted to the many people with whom I have had the chance to work in the academy over the past seven years. You have listened to my ideas, offered me yours, and willingly engaged in discussions. I am sure you will find the topics of many of those discussions captured in this work. I am thankful for the many intellectual comrades with whom I have worked over the last seven years and whose ideas and reflections are present in this work: Bahar Biazar, Bonnie Burstow, Rupaleem Bhuyan, Sara Carpenter, Joe Curnow, Sheila Gruner, Shirin Haghgou, Soheila Pashang, Heather Read, Genevieve Ritchie, Thomas Saczkowski, Tara Silver, Rosy Thompson and Brian Walsh. i iv Sometimes it is hard to know how to put thanks into words. My journey of the past seven years would have been profoundly different had I not accepted the invitation offered by Shahrzad Mojab to engage with a small community of former political prisoners. Thank you, Shahrzad, for inviting me on that journey, for walking with me, learning with me, taking the time to understand me (and the act of bread-making), and for the many ways in which you have invested in me, including by supervising my PhD dissertation. Thanks to my mother, Faith Holwyn, and my father, Harvey Osborne, who have always believed that I was capable of anything I set my mind to. For my siblings Anna Osborne, Laura Hohertz and Nathan Osborne, thanks for your support and your love. Thanks to D’thea Webster for wanting to read the words I had written and for her painstaking act of making sure that they fit together in the best way possible. I am so thankful to have been welcomed into such a wonderful family- thank you to the Ages-Breukelman-Miedema-Rhiger clan for your love and support through this whole process. And finally, profound thanks to my husband, Ed Miedema, who couldn’t have known what he was getting himself into when he married a woman who was just about to start her PhD. Thank you for loving me and supporting me through everything. iiv Table of Contents ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................................ii DEDICATION...............................................................................................................................iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...........................................................................................................iv TABLE OF CONTENTS...............................................................................................................vi LIST OF FIGURES.........................................................................................................................x LIST OF APPENDICES..............................................................................................................viii PROLOGUE................................................................................................................................xiv INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 Remembering as Resistance ........................................................................................................... 5 Setting the Context .......................................................................................................................... 8 Introducing Purpose of my Research and Research Questions .................................................... 10 Making Connections to Adult Education and Social Movement Learning .................................. 12 A Note on Research Participants .................................................................................................. 13 An Important Note on Violence and Trauma ............................................................................... 15 Living Beside: Understanding the Process of Healing and Recovery .......................................... 16 CHAPTER ONE: LEARNING TO RESIST VIOLENCE ........................................................... 19 The Context of Political Prisoners from Iran ......................................................................... 20 The Impacts of Violence ........................................................................................................ 23 Understanding