Feeling and Fearing War: Emotional Approaches to War in Colombia

• In Event: Conflict, peacebuilding, and transitional justice: Colombia and Ecuador

Proposal

War and emotion intersect in a twofold matter. First, the history of war can be used to instruct in values, build empathy, and establish a collective identity. In history teaching, for example, textbooks’ suggested “moral of the story” contributes to establishing a common, cohesive imagination while connecting individuals to past events (Ghosh, 2014; Klerides, 2016). Second, emotions shape personal and social stories of conflict as people strive to make sense of war through narrative efforts (Gudmundsdottir, 1996; Kohler Riessman, 2008). After all, humans are storytelling creatures who live storied lives (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). Contrasting a textbook analysis of Colombian history textbooks with the personal stories of indirect victims of war in the Colombian Pacific Coast, this study explores the link between war and emotion as it is used for making sense of both personal and collective identities.
Preliminary results show that textbooks tend to contrast general statements about the current armed conflict, and the age of violence that came before it, with remarks about empathy, optimism, and kindness. However, statistics and assertions about particular armed groups are presented in an informative, emotionless fashion. In contrast, the stories of students living in the midst of conflict reveal an emotional, sensorial relationship with war in which armed groups are constituted by flesh-and-bone individuals whose experiences blur the line between victims and victimizers. In these counternarratives, the sounds of war and the fear attached to them are the most salient features. This study of Colombian official and non-official narratives of war adds to our understanding of the role of emotions in constructing personal and collective identities amid conflict.


References

Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of Experience and Narrative Inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2–14.
Ghosh, S. (2014). Identity, Politics, and Nation-building in History Textbooks in Bangladesh. Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, 6(2), 25–41. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44320033
Gudmundsdottir, S. (1996). The Teller, the Tale, and the One Being Told: The Narrative Nature of the Research Interview. Curriculum Inquiry, 26(3), 293–306.
Klerides, E. (2016). (Re)reading national identities in school historiographies: pedagogical implications from the case of Cyrpus. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 24(2), 269–283. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2016.1150324
Kohler Riessman, C. (2008). Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

Author

• Paula Liliana Mantilla Blanco, Teachers College, Columbia University