From ambivalence to agency: Becoming an author, an actor and a hero in a drama workshop

Abstract

This paper examines ways in which the ambivalence can be recognized as a point of potential transformation and an opportunity to gain voice and agency. Our ethnographic study is focused on a drama workshop with foster care teens in Finland. We analyze the ways in which the youth's expressions of ambivalence are socially recognized as a catalyst for an agentive transcendence of their inner turmoil, conflicting desires, loyalties and visions of possible futures. While ambivalence is usually seen as a paralyzing state preventing one from making decisions and continuing with life, we develop a positive concept of ambivalence as a juncture at which disparate conflicting discourses from different “worlds” in one's life penetrate each other, creating openings for personal transformation. We see ambivalence as a dialogic tension in coordinating relationships in contradictory, dilemmatic social situations and, as a state facilitating the appearance of a dialogic relationship to one's own self.