Narrative Dialogue Research Articles

Jaina Narrative Refutations of Kumārila: Relative Chronology and the History of Jaina-Mīmām.sps h1.1sā Dialogues

Assigning a date to Kumārila is notoriously difficult. Kumārila’s dates are usually assigned through a relative chronology of Brahmanical and Buddhist philosophers with whom Kumārila engages or is engaged. This is a precarious method because the dates of these interlocutors are equally unstable. But what if in considering systematic dialogues (śāstra) to be the primary medium for interreligious philosophical debate we have missed a source that does engage with Kumārila, and that can be reliably dated? In this article, I turn to a religious group whom, it has been previously thought, did not respond to Kumārila until the eighth century—Jainas—as well as to a genre that is not typically viewed as a site of systematic philosophical dialogue—narrative. I argue that the Padmacarita, a Jaina Rāmāyaṇa composed by a Digambara writer called Raviṣeṇa, contains a narrative refutation of Kumārila’s commentary to Mīmāṃsāsūtra 1.1.2. By bringing to light this refutation, and explaining how Raviṣeṇa’s Padmacarita can be reliably dated, I assign Kumārila’s terminus ante quem to the date of the Padmacarita’s composition, 676 CE. Finally, I suggest that Raviṣeṇa’s Padmacarita is the earliest extant Jaina text to discuss Kumārila’s claims, and that Jainas used narrative to reflect on Mīmāṃsā before they turned to śāstra as another medium for this dialogue.

“Fazendo do Limão uma Limonada Sofisticada”: Gênero e Raça no Organizar Cotidiano das Práticas Culinárias

Abstract This article aims to understand the organization of everyday life from the dynamics of gendering and racialization of cooking/eating practices engendered by ordinary managers. To do so, we problematize organization in a procedural and micropolitical ontology that allows to highlight how everyday cracks cross and give rise to practical rearticulations of a tactical and strategic nature. Narratives from ordinary black managers were captured and analyzed using the dialogic narrative technique, in the search for articulating the participating subjects’ voices with those of the authors of the text, the adopted theoretical framework and the readership. Our findings unveil the kitchen as a central organizational space for understanding these ordinary practices (although sometimes invisibilized and silenced), in heterogeneous processes of apprehension of culinary know-how, as well as in dynamic tactical and strategic articulations for survival purposes. Due to the moment in which the field research took place, the narratives describe these articulations amid the impacts caused by the covid-19 pandemic on the daily lives of the managers researched. Empirically, this study contributes by showing the heterogeneity in the organization of practices that constitute ordinary management, and which, in the context of a pandemic, produced narratives that differ from a hegemonic narrative of rupture, but which nevertheless impact on everyday life and give rise to reconfigurations. Theoretically, we contribute by showing how practices articulate apparently opposing repertoires such as private and public, sociability and business in everyday life. We have therefore advanced in understanding the organization of practices as constituents of ordinary management, in particular, from the crossings produced by the categories of race and gender that engender survival tactics and strategies.

Design and Evaluation of a Narrative Dialogue System to Enhance the Autonomous Motivation of Individuals Involved in Social Issue Innovation

Design and Evaluation of a Narrative Dialogue System to Enhance the Autonomous Motivation of Individuals Involved in Social Issue Innovation

АУТИЗМ: ФАКТОРЫ НЕРЕАЛИЗОВАННОГО БЫТИЯ

Statement of the problem. The modern world promptly changes ideas of how the world is arranged. The phenomenon of autism, and earlier always mysterious, forces to rethink our representations and some dogmas. The purpose of the article is to reveal and prove possible omissions in historically developed approaches of escort of people with autism. Methodology. The research relies on a complete set of principles and methods of humanitarian and interdisciplinary research. The main principles to study the phenomenon of autism are a cultural and historical principle, a system principle and a principle of integrity (J. Bugental). A principle of unity of a person, society and social action (M. Weber, W. Dilthey, G. Simmel) is important. The theoretical and methodological foundations of the study were existential-humanistic psychology, philosophical phenomenology and understanding sociology. The leading role in the study was played by the traditional methods for the humanities, namely, system and comparative analysis (E. Durkheim, J. Dewey), hermeneutic (J. Habermas, H.G. Gadamer) and phenomenological (E. Husserl) methods. At the same time empirical methods were applied: synthesis of primary sociological data, observation, overt observation, content analysis, narrative dialogue, interview. Research results. Factors of the missed opportunities or unrealized existence of people with autism and their families are revealed. The resource of more effective approaches for forming a picture of the world and a picture of a person is suggested. Conclusion. The considered holistic approach does not contradict to a humanistic approach habitually developed around the phenomenon of autism, and on the contrary, they complement each other. The image of truly human in a autism carrier as, however, in any other person develops rather unconsciously, and the conducted research proves that forming of a picture of the world and a picture of a person from the position of holism is an effective model.

White, Brown, mad, fat, male and female academics: a duoethnography challenging our experiences of deficit identities

PurposeThe authors are two social work academics working in a UK Higher Education Institute. Social work is underpinned by principles of anti-oppressive practice which leads to challenge discrimination and stigmatisation. The authors explored experiences of deficit imposed by others' perceptions of the physical and ethnic appearance and mental health status. The authors consider how these features influence how the authors locate themselves within the wider contexts of academic spaces in higher education institutions (HEI).Design/methodology/approachUsing duoethnography, a collaborative research methodology, the authors recorded reflections on their experiences for five months and met weekly to discuss their material. This process enabled them to engage in dialogic narrative through collaborative writing using both structured and unstructured reflections. The authors analysed the reflections using thematic data analysis.FindingsFour themes were generated that led to understanding how the authors could challenge oppression. The oppression became visible as the authors reflected on the common experiences of deficit. The understanding of other's oppression as well as the authors’ own became clearer as the unconscious experiences became conscious. The authors began to locate the experiences of being both privileged and oppressed in the wider social context of the HE. Finally, the authors recognised how the “deficit” identities could transform into strengths.Originality/valueThis personal journey of two academics reflecting on how they are paradoxically both privileged and yet oppressed challenges other professionals to honestly explore how they themselves can occupy both roles and become allies in confronting discrimination in all its forms.

Masks across borders: etiquette, threat and prevention

ABSTRACT This collaborative autoethnography addresses the cultural, social, and political issues of (un)masking during the COVID-19 pandemic. Though it may seem a simple act of wearing face masks in order to protect oneself and others from the virus, it has turned into a rather intricate phenomena for multiple reasons, including cultural attitudes, political rhetoric, and misinformation from leading health organizations. In this piece, the authors offer narrative dialogues of their experiences with mask-wearing across cultures and time, spanning from their youth in Japan and Bosnia–Herzegovina, respectively, to their current adult life in the U.S. prior to and during the pandemic. During the COVID-19 health crisis, reflections of our lived experiences across and within cultures provided us with rich qualitative data to understand the sociocultural impacts of mask-wearing (Rituparna & Uekusa [2020]. Collaborative autoethnography: ‘Self-reflection’ as a timely alternative research approach during the global pandemic. Qualitative Research Journal, 20(4), 383–392. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-06-2020-0054). This work contributes to mask-wearing behaviors and larger social and cultural changes regarding empathy and respect across cultural boundaries.

Octavio Paz Meets Malay Roychoudhury: The History of El Corno Emplumado and the Evolution of a Poetics

In this article, we explore how the destinies of some poets were intertwined in the history of publications of El Corno emplumado, a Spanish-English bilingual literary journal that was edited by Octavio Paz among others and published in Mexico from 1962 to 1969. The epistolary relationships that El Corno emplumado engendered contributed to the writing ethic of an entire generation. The poets developed the flipped metaphor as a descriptive fall for differential semantics, as a rhetorical figure or strategy which endows words with sensations that differ from the immediately embodied or corporeal moments they represent. El Corno thus unites Allen Ginsberg, Octavio Paz, Ernesto Cardenal, Malay Roychoudhury, Shakti Chattopadhyay, and others in the recognition of a global style or poetics. We discuss epistolary contents from within the orbit of El Corno Emplumado to understand how the dialogue between Paz and Malay offers hermeneutical insights into the surreal, Hungry poetics born in the middle of the last century. Above all the history of Malay Roychoudhury’s poetic rebellion, his incarceration, and the bitter protest against this incident in USA and Latin America strikes a chord of union in the dialogic narrative of the two vast continents of America and India.

‘It’s easier to just keep going’: elaborating on a narrative of forward momentum in sport

ABSTRACT In this article we elaborate on a narrative of forward momentum in sport drawing on multiple interviews (total = 37 interviews) over six months with thirteen current and former competitive athletes (9 women, 4 men) from various sports and different stages of their sport careers. Using Dialogical Narrative Analysis to guide the analysis, the results elaborate on a narrative of forward momentum and the ways it is drawn upon by athletes to make sense of their experiences in sport. A narrative of forward momentum emphasises concerns about continual progress and increasing achievements in performance over time, and athletes’ stories and lives were structured around the continual pursuit of success at the highest possible level in sport before the end of one’s career. Athletes felt ‘swept along’ by the structure of sport, and injuries and illnesses were seen as setbacks that could cause athletes to lose out on their progress and which they would have to ‘catch up’ on. We further elaborate on the concept of a contract within the narrative of forward momentum, wherein athletes invested hard work that would eventually ‘pay off’ and which promoted continual training and improvement in order to make progress and maintain momentum. A narrative of forward momentum is explored as a useful companion story, and as a potentially ‘dangerous’ companion story. We conclude by discussing the implications of a narrative of forward momentum for exploring the ways that athletes make sense of their experiences in sport.

Artistic Narrative Structure of Ihsan Abdel Quduos and D. H. Lawrence's Novels: A Stylistic Comparative Sketch

This paper explores the artistic structures, aesthetics, and thematics in the literary works of Ihsan Abd Al-Quduos (the Arab writer) and D. H. Lawrence (the English writer) in terms of the narrative style, language, dialogue, settings, and characters through a textual analysis in the light of the premises of the narrative aesthetics, comparative assumptions and aesthetic intertextualities. Comparatively, the paper sheds light on the aspects of artistic aesthetics of structure and style between the two writers, basically the treatment of women, clarifying their narrative experiences. Therefore, this paper adopts the descriptive and analytical critical theory to explore similarities and dissimilarities in the aesthetics, style, and language of both writers' selected texts. The results of this paper textually reveal both authors' awareness of the nature of the fictional discourse as linguistic creativity and special artistic composition. Also, both novelists show some similarities and differences in narrative content, style, structure and themes, each according to his realistic experience as a result of the relationship with the surrounding environment and the cultural background. So, the two writers are very careful with all their art and creativity to endow their novels with aesthetics of expression and their structural and semantic spaces. The paper explores such issues in their selected narratives, which include Ihsan's Sleepless, The Dead End, A Nose and three Eyes, and Don't Turn off the Sun. Lawrence's novels include Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, The Lost Girl, Aaron's Rod, and Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Standing out on the Margins: Using Dialogical Narrative Analysis to Explore Mental Health Student Nurse Identity Construction and Core Modules

Literature and experience suggest that student mental health nurses feel marginalised in core modules. A focus group was held to explore mental health nurse students’ experiences of whole cohort core modules in nursing. Students from a university in the North of England attended a one hour focus group followed by dialogical narrative analysis of transcripts. Stories of shared professional identity, marginal status, critical thinking, and practical application of theory were shared by the group. Greater presence of mental health stakeholders earlier in the programme and more applied field specific teaching offer a means to bolster professional identity in mental health nursing students.

Transformation of the city of Split industrial heritage into a science center

Background: Split is a city in the Mediterranean, situated on Croatia’s coastline. Split’s northern coast has a long-stand-ing industrial function and harbors the city’s first electri-cal substation, designed by modernist architect Josip Maria Kodl. Objective: The goal of this work was to envision a science center in Split’s industrial zone in Dujmovača (the northern coast of the Split peninsula), comprising a science museum with a research and congress center. The programmatic and spatial analyses of the science center’s amenities and the proposal as a whole demonstrate the potential of this forgotten space in Split and breathe new life into Kodl’s ar-chitectural heritage. Methods: The proposed solution uses a dialogical narrative between a conservation, contextual, programmatic, and theoretical approach within a strict orthogonal structure, fostering the development of alternative associations and elaboration of architectural details.Results: The proposed solution constitutes a complex of multiple interconnected and flexible elements. This al-lows different parts of the Science Center to function inde-pendently of each other. This paper provides an analysis of design steps and methods, the proposal’s advantages and limitations, and the way the repurposing of industrial heri-tage was approached. Conclusion: The position of the Science Center in Dujmovača would provide one of the first impressions when entering Split on the future metro line. By reconcil-ing landscape and industrial architecture, the proposed building complex offers a framework for presenting various kinds of modifiable content, for both the pres-ent and the future.

Meaning-making in an intergenerational project: a dialogic narrative analysis of young children’s interactions with older adults

ABSTRACT This article reports on findings from a case study of an intergenerational project between a nursery school and a residential care home for people with dementia in the South-East of England. It examines how multi-modalities support meaning-making between 3-year-old children and older adults. The study is qualitative, interpretative and explorative. Data were collected using naturalistic observations of children and older adults during intergenerational sessions at the care home and qualitative interviews with nursery school practitioners. The analysis draws on a dialogic narrative approach informed by the work of Mikhal Bakhtin. Our research demonstrates how multi-modalities support young children’s engagement and meaning-making with older adults. The findings explore how the context of the intergenerational sessions was influential in shaping the interactions between the children and older adults. The study contributes to existing research, as well as offering new understandings about the interactions between children and older adults within a co-located intergenerational project. Our research would suggest a benefit in the re-establishment of intergenerational practice in a post-pandemic context when such encounters pose less physical health risks.

Exploring spaces of contact: intercultural encounters at Jewish and Buddhist religious centres in Groningen, Europe

ABSTRACT Societies and communities are destined and determined to change when they are open to crossing cultures. The phenomenon acknowledges diverse cultural adaptations, leading to new global goals for global interaction. Similarly, several studies demonstrate the existence of contact and engagement among diverse communities across Europe, fostering intercultural dialogue. As a result, the study seeks to investigate those spaces, specifically religious centres in Europe, that may serve as potential places of contact for diverse communities using the theories of ‘contact zones’, ‘hybrid identity’, particularly ‘organic hybridity’, ‘interfaith and interreligious encounters’ and ‘interculturalism’. The empirical study examines the intercultural interactions and exchanges occurring in the Jewish and Buddhist religious centres in Groningen to recognise how public spaces, particularly religious centres demonstrate the emergence of interculturality in Europe. Through interviews with officials, the study investigates cultural contacts and exchanges among disparate communities in the Buddhist and Jewish religious spaces of Groningen, The Netherlands. These interviews are further analysed using Arthur W Frank’s ‘Dialogical Narrative Analysis’ approach. Therefore, the paper examines the emergence of interculturality through experiences of contact among diverse European cultural or religious communities, using the framework of contact zones, hybrid identity, interfaith and interreligious studies, and interculturalism.

Making sense of humour among men in a weight-loss program: A dialogical narrative approach

ABSTRACT Humour appears to be an important aspect of health-promoting efforts for some men. A better understanding of the role humour plays in men’s health contexts may provide insight into the optimal design of health interventions for men. In this study, we explored the role banter, humour that blurs the line between playfulness and aggression, plays for men in a men’s weight loss context. We applied dialogical narrative analysis to thirty interviews conducted with men involved in a men’s weight-loss program that leverages competition to drive weight loss. Banter served several functions for men in the program, including allowing them to determine their social position during early group formation, feel good, develop camaraderie, experience respite, provide male inter-personal support in a counter-intuitive way, and ‘be themselves’. Men could use banter as a tool to develop resilience for themselves, but could also adapt their approach to use banter as a means of providing support for others. Banter could also cause trouble, through conflict and misunderstandings, primarily understood through a lens of narratives of progressiveness, inclusiveness, and a ‘changing culture’. Banter could do harm, by positioning oneself against certain characteristics, and as a tool to get under people’s skin. However, an approach-orientation to one’s problems may allow misunderstandings that arise due to banter to lead to enhanced group cohesion. Intervention developers ought to explicitly address the potential for banter (and humour more broadly) to have positive and negative effects in men’s health contexts.

Radicalizing Life after Death: Dostoevskii’s ‘Bobok: Zapiski odnogo litsa’ (‘Bobok: Notes of a Certain Person’) and Petrushevskaia’s Nomer Odin, ili V sadakh drugikh vozmozhnostei (Number One, or in the Gardens of Other Opportunities)

Abstract The focus of this article is on Dostoevskii’s story “Bobok” [“Bobok,” 1873] and Petrushevskaia’s novel Nomer Odin, ili V sadakh drugikh vozmozhnostei [Number One, or In the Gardens of Other Opportunities, 2004]. These dialogical narratives explore the theme of life after death; they portray death as a transition to life that includes several stages, and focus on the process of dying, living in a different form, and dying again. I discuss how these radical views on death are expressed in “Bobok” and Nomer Odin (with some reference to Dostoevskii’s Zapiski iz podpol’ia [Notes from Underground, 1864] and Petrushevskaia’s Vremia: Noch’ [Time: Night, 1992]): from the “getting naked” (“zagolimsia,” “obnazhimsia”) preached and practised by the decaying corpses in Dostoevskii’s text, to transitions between different stages after death in Petrushevskaia’s novel, such as metempsychosis, as well as tropes used to denote these transitions.

Filarete’s Libro and Memoria: The Archive within a Book

The first illustrated manuscript on architecture was produced in the fifteenth century by a sculptor turned architect, known as Filarete (1400–1469). Written as a dialogical narrative, taking place between a patron and his architect, the treatise’s pedagogical tone unfolds as a form of storytelling about the design and construction of an ideal city. Accordingly, the architectural drawings accompanying the text hold a polysemous nature. Disegno constitutes the first step of the design process within the overall narrative, while also providing a visual demonstration of the author’s words. However, the discovery taking place in the story of an illustrated ancient codex – memoria – suggests another way to interpret the architect’s intentions. The literary maneuver of inserting a book within another book and the intertwined nature of word and image allow Filarete to use his Libro to document his accomplishments and the wonders he could build with the support of a devoted patron. Under the semblance of suggesting to his patron to construct a memoria of his buildings, Filarete curates his Libro in the form of an archive, through which, ideologically, he can leave his own name to posterity as an architect.

The Moral Involvement of Novice Teachers in Primary Education: Exploring Moral Dialogues

Novice teachers working in primary school experience in their practice, impact the contemporary multicultural, knowledge-based society. This article aims to gain insight into novice teachers' retrospection on their actions, using the modes of Moral Involvement, based on a post-modern stand on morality and a dialogical narrative approach to teachers' moral meaning-making. The modes describe the “mixed moral atmosphere” as the congruities and incongruities between two perspectives, the “I” and the “Other” of the dialogical “Self.” Moral Involvement frames the reciprocity of influences of the workplace, the others and teachers' inner argumentation to balance self-interest, mutual interest and personal attachment to principles. Transcripts of interviews with novices in primary education were analyzed to categorize how novices reflect on their work and how they use different perspectives to explore their Moral Involvement. The results show that novice teachers mainly discuss their achievements from the I-position and use the Other-positions when elaborating on collaborating, alignments or uncertainty about their work. The conclusion is drawn that retrospection on moral issues during Teacher Education and workplace learning supports learning to deal with complex moral issues experienced in school practice.

Asian Fusion: New Encounters in the Asian-German Avant-Garde by Caroline Rupprecht

Reviewed by: Asian Fusion: New Encounters in the Asian-German Avant-Garde by Caroline Rupprecht Arina Rotaru Caroline Rupprecht. Asian Fusion: New Encounters in the Asian-German Avant-Garde. Peter Lang, 2020. 259 pp. Paper, $63.95. In her latest foray into postwar and contemporary literary productions, comparatist Caroline Rupprecht chooses the contested culinary metaphor of fusion to characterize desirable forms of contact between Germans and racialized others, especially Asian Germans. The author takes issue in particular with representations of Asians as Semitic, orientalized Jews, a conflation she places at the root of contemporary forms of neofascist violence. Through a “call-and-response” metaphor with roots in “African-American slave songs, Indian kirtans and Jewish liturgical services” (6), which she borrows in turn from Tsitsi Jaji’s work, the author foregrounds a dialogic narrative of generations bound to one another within the German-speaking space. In this space, the generations create “new forms of solidarity,” which Rupprecht finds to be an effective mode of engagement with the emerging discipline of Asian-German studies, beyond the postcolonial studies paradigm current in anglophone contexts (14). Rupprecht pairs authors whom she labels “Asian-Germans” with post-war authors who have situated representations of Asian culture in relation to German history. She constructs the book’s chapters as a sequence of would-be intergenerational exchanges around memory, history, and identity between Yoko Tawada and W. G. Sebald, Pham Thi Hoài and Peter Weiss, and Anna Kim and Joseph Beuys. In addition to discussing canonical names, the book also covers authors less known to the wider public—including Pham, a resident of Berlin, and Kim, who grew up in Vienna and now also lives in Berlin—providing welcome additions to any university curriculum. [End Page 129] The book’s theoretical framework is inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin, who developed his dialogic theories to counter Stalinist aggression, as well as by Emmanuel Levinas and French sinologist François Jullien, from whom the author borrows the idea of a Daoist-informed “in-between” space to counter violent assimilation of the Other. Rupprecht might have considered responding as well to the problematic ascription of the in-between space to the migrant figure as subsisting in a vacuum. Rupprecht’s use of scale and topography to comment on sites of memory, in particular when focusing on Sebald and Tawada, represents an original contribution. As Rupprecht demonstrates, Sebald uses the Chinese gendered prop analogy to describe the destruction caused by the Holocaust. According to Rupprecht, Tawada’s spaces transcend national identification and engage with subjects that operate outside the human-centered Western philosophical model. Whereas Weiss uses Vietnam as an analogy for German history, Pham tells stories of contemporary Hanoi from the perspective of a male narrator in order to reflect on gender stereotypes and defamiliarize reality through masks. Rupprecht explicitly deconstructs the Eurocentric perspective of postwar German authors against the voices of Asian German writers and their reluctance to “translate” one historical period into another (146). I commend the diversity of the author’s interpretive perspectives: she draws on insights not only from food studies but also from gender and translation studies, memory studies, avant-garde studies, and space studies. The chapters on “discordances,” which bring Beuys and Kim together, highlight several discrepancies in Beuys’s engagement with his National Socialist past and interpret his representation of Eurasia as a substitute for his own fantasies involving expiation of National Socialist guilt. As Rupprecht notes, Eurasia has nothing to do with “Eurasia” as a real space but everything to do with Beuys and Germany. These chapters in particular initiate an important discussion of Beuys’s legacy, which may involve historical whitewashing and instrumentalization of the East–West dialogue. The book is in some respects wanting in its rather marginal references to the avant-garde itself, for instance to the primitiveness of the early-twentieth-century avant-garde and the engagement with Fluxus of Beuys and Tawada, the impact of surrealism on Weiss, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s impact on Pham. Rupprecht supplements the book’s fragmented treatment of the avant-garde with additional critical perspectives that resist the embrace of a happy fusion through “new encounters,” drawing [End Page...

System-level barriers to personal recovery in mental health: qualitative analysis of co-productive narrative dialogues between users and professionals.

No co-productive narrative synthesis of system-level facilitators and barriers to personal recovery in mental illness has been undertaken. To clarify system-level facilitators and barriers to personal recovery of people with mental illness. Qualitative study guided by thematic analysis. Data were collected through one focus group, which involved seven service users and three professionals. This group had 11 meetings, each lasting 2 h at a local research institute, between July 2016 to January 2018. The analysis yielded three themes: barriers inhibiting positive interaction within personal relationship networks, roots of barriers from mental health systems and the social cultural context, and possible solutions to address the roots. Barriers were acknowledged as those related to sense of safety, locus of control within oneself and reunion with self. The roots of barriers were recognised within mental health services, including system without trauma sensitivity, lack of advocacy support and limited access to psychosocial approaches. Roots from social cultural context were also found. There were no narratives relating to facilitators. A possible solution was to address the roots from systems. Social cultural change was called for that makes personalised goals most valued, with an inclusive design that overcomes stigma, to achieve an open and accepting community. The analysis yielded system-level barriers specific to each recovery process. Roots of barriers that need transformation to facilitate personal recovery were identified within mental health services. Social interventions should be further explored to translate the suggested social cultural changes into action.

Caring for Dying Parents in the Shadow of Childhood Maltreatment: Gendered Agency, Constraint, and Health

Adult daughters represent the largest and fastest growing population of providers of unpaid care labor (UCL) to older adults with life limiting illness. Providing UCL to parents at the end of life is associated with significant and lasting risks of morbidity and mortality, especially for women with negative relationships with care recipients, and those who provide UCL based on constraining gendered expectations rather than agentic choice. While nearly one quarter of US women experience some form of maltreatment from parents during childhood, few studies have examined, or even acknowledged, the effect of trauma on the experience and health impact of family UCL. We used feminist poststructuralist informed dialogic narrative analysis to explore discursive constructions of agency and constraint in co-constructed life histories from 21 women who provided end of life UCL to older adult parents who maltreated them in childhood. For these women, parental childhood maltreatment influenced identity construction, social position, intersubjectivity, and vulnerability to victimization. For some, providing end-of-life UCL to the parents who maltreated them facilitated the mobilization of relational agency and identity validation. For others, providing UCL potentiated lifelong constraint, reinforcing their positions as non-agents and leading to significant psychical and emotional harm. End of life UCL for older adult parents represents a crucible out of which either healing or re-traumatization can arise. Our findings will be leveraged to inform clinical practice and policy to support the growing population women trauma survivors providing UCL to older adult parents, reducing negative outcomes for those at the greatest risk.