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Contribution short abstract

What does it mean to engage with the suffering of others through scholarly work? How does the act of bearing the co-experience of trauma affect the victims and the researcher? To what extent can a scholar maintain a purely observational stance within the unsettling encounter of violence?

Contribution long abstract

Conducting qualitative research on experiences of loss in the context of war means being concerned with the meaning-making process. From a feminist perspective, the boundaries between “researcher” and “participants” become increasingly blurred (Willing).

Since 2015, I conducted interviews with Syrians and Iraqis about heritage loss. These interviews included testimonies from victims of pervasive violence, documenting extreme acts of torture, abduction, isolation, the loss of own relatives and home. Furthermore, some interviewees have expressed verbal racism against other sects or ethnicities, including my own. Additionally, my research includes analysing excerpts posted in social media, where I encountered horrifying records of sounds of suffering, torture, and sexual assault. During one particular meeting with a group of women in Aleppo, the trauma of war, specifically the loss of children and enforced separation, drove the group interview into an atmosphere of collective grief. One participant addressed me, “We wanted to help you with your PhD. Now you drown us all in tears.“

What does it mean to engage with the suffering of others through scholarly work? How does the act of bearing the co-experience of trauma affect the victims and the researcher, i.e. the observer? To what extent can a scholar maintain a purely observational stance within the unsettling encounter of violence? Based on the concept of “multidirectional Memory” (Rothberg), I argue that multidirectional positionality allows scholars to address injustice in an activist sense and scholarly work, while enriching the ethical question of the role of academia in the 21st century.