Towards a pedagogy of the incomprehensible: trauma and the imperative of critical witness in literacy classrooms

Abstract

In this article, I explore questions about what it means to carry, live and invite traumatic stories into the space of a literacy classroom. Weaving illustrative moments from the classroom with trauma theory and research, I ask, What does it mean to embrace the incomprehensible in literacy classrooms? How might the incomprehensible be viewed as a productive and connected space in students’ academic and social experiences in schools? To delve into these questions, I turn to scholars who conceptualize trauma and its relationship with what we can access through and at the limits of articulation and to two young children’s writing and talk. In particular, I situate children’s experiences in trauma studies scholar Caruth’s ideas about the inadequacy of language in the face of trauma and cultural theorist Massumi’s arguments about affect as that which escapes our efforts to structure experience. I argue that incomprehensibility invokes an important metaphorical space of not knowing that demands reciprocal approaches testimony and critical witness responses that can serve to collapse the binaries so often employed in efforts to make sense of children’s lives and literacies.