Recently, our campus has been filled with talks of multiple sexual assaults especially as UBC was picked up earlier this semester on national news in the Frosh rape chant scandal of the Business School, and adding on to the fact that the assailant is still on the loose. Throughout the daily lives of us students, these stories and the reaction to the assaults have escalated to many different approaches including forms of a feminist rally, “TAKE BACK THE NIGHT UBC” to the responses of the RCMP and the campus security. But more recently, the victim of the second assault came out with her article in our school newspaper, The Ubyssey. In this issue, the victim reflects upon her change in perspective through the incident and raises concerns of our, the general public’s, incapability to fully estimate the influence we have in retelling her life narrative.

“An attack like this one is personal. I feel violated as I walk around campus overhearing conversations about “that girl who was attacked,” or sitting in class within earshot of classmates discussing my attack.” -Second Assault Victim, The Ubyssey Oct. 20th 2013

As both the second victim and I have noticed, there is a high fluidity of this story due to the fact that we are so familiar (a key audience engaging point of a life narrative) to the issue, and the fact that the assault raises concerns for our own individual security. However, what I lack to realize was that by contributing and redistributing the story of the incident, I have been participating in the reshaping of the life narrative that we have at hand. And this form of remodeling is not necessarily of a desired pattern as we became more distant from the issue. In my daily conversations with peers, we talk about number of assaults, at which locations, and when they occurred and we fail to recognize even the existence of the people involved. Although it is true that initiatives have risen up in the forms of “TAKE BACK THE NIGHT UBC” and other social groups such as fraternities taking the initiative to walk people home, I still believe this is the direct results of the alteration of the values of the life narrative while enduring through multiple retelling of the story and the fact that the 4 incidents have become such a homogeneous occurrence to the general public. They have lost its value in identifying the possible trauma of the victims to what can the UBC community do to prevent this from happening.

“The connotations surrounding the word “victim” make me feel weak, and suggest that somehow this man will stop me from being me.” -Second Assault Victim, The Ubyssey Oct. 20th 2013

Concurrently, the fluidity and high accessibility of the stories and how the general population perceive them have contributed to the victim’s re-consolidating her beliefs. The victim can react, rightfully so, angrily about her label as a “weak, Cinderella-esque character”(Victim). And by observing our indifferent transferring of her story, she is able to further investigate the root causes of the incident to the familiarity of “rape culture” in our daily lives whether through the use of the term “rape” in non-applicable contexts or the mass media depicting the inferiority of women.

The selfish reactions in which we take as citizens to life narratives of others have significant impact. The recurring process of labelling and familiarization can backfire in producing inanimate depictions of the people involved. In turn, the collective shift of her life narrative from a “horrible crime” to a “don’t walk alone at night” and finally to an “argument of sexist implication by the security forces” depicts the social values we possess to her story and concurrently, we have  completely neglected the victim’s well-being. As responsible citizens, we have the duty to be informed about the issues around us. But in the process of redistributing the stories as life narratives, should we not question all the possible assumptions and collective values that we might make as readers and redistributors?

In the past weeks, we examined different forms of life narratives revolving around the war in the middle east in the early 2000s. Different forms included a blog emitted real time from Baghdad by a mid-twenty male, Salam Pax, a blog by a pseudonymous teenaged girl named Riverbend and also a graphic novel, Persepolis, depicting first hand traumatic accounts of the Islamic Revolution through the lens of Marjane Satrapi as a teenaged girl. Undoubtedly, all of these forms of life narratives gave me closer insights to the situations in the middle-east that I would not have if I were to absorb the major sources presented to myself in the form of newspapers, television and other media. In the context of “globalization”, the high accessibility and the fluidity of knowledge and commodities came to play a large role in these life narratives being expressed to western audience such as myself. But the idea of globalization is only possible because of the curiosity and the human nature to explore the unknown that were present in the “western” societies. But what are these life narratives’ methods of attracting audience and what purpose do they serve in conveying their messages?

One concept that is common throughout the three narratives that is readily identified is the concept of “familiarization”. The discovering idea of “he/she is just like us” that develops within the western readership when they read these life narratives is shared through the introductory chapter of Soft Weapons by Gillian Whitlock. Pax, Riverbend, and Persepolis all successfully animates their characters through the depiction of many reactionary emotions and also by the shift in attitude towards western society and to the conflict itself through the development of the blog or the graphic narrative over time.

However, while reading The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, where author Hillary Chute analyzes structures and the use of perspective of Persepolis, I noticed the existence of the “productive disjuncture” (Chute 103). The productive disjuncture is the inevitable reality that exists in depicting such traumatic and out of the ordinary events of the war for westerners. Through this disjuncture, readership realizes the ever so great dis-familiarity that exists in these life narratives.

But how do these familiarization and de-familiarization of events complement each other? Both of these components of attracting audience gives the readership a relative stance on the problem. The familiarity gives a “comfort zone” in which the readership are ready to explore but when they realize the reality of the situation of the dis-familiarity, they are given a wake up call. For example, in Persepolis the Marji’s childhood and naive perspective contribute to the familiarization of the western readership. Also in Riverbend, her stories of internal relationship with family and her genuine struggle within her daily lives gives a familiarity within ourselves. But on the other hand, this familiarity is further shaken when readership realizes suddenly, that they are not under threat of constant bombings and being stripped of basic human rights. These concepts coexist to further engage the audience but also, these polarized methods help depict the urgency of the situation by showing the extreme relations (familiar and unfamiliar) a reader could have with the blog or Persepolis and thus serves the purpose of life narratives to be remembered. In other words, the familiar and unfamiliar are a balancing act that a life narrative author adopts in engaging the readers with intertwined moments of comfort and tension.

During the week of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I was able to experience the reality of the effects of the Residential Schools through the exhibition “Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools” at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Originally coming from Japan, a relatively homogeneous nation in terms of ethnicity, the exposure I received from the TRC, in its effort in capturing the movements of reconciliation through inviting many perspectives from not only within Canada but from the greater Aboriginal societies around the world, made me realize the depth in which the nation had come to pursuing the vague goal of reconciliation.

An art piece that caught my attention from the moment I walked in was the The Lesson by Joane Cardinal Schubert (Page 40 of the Catalog). As I entered the main gallery hall, not only does the three dimensional exhibit give tangible expressions, the adoption of a single corner of the hall conveyed the message of the artist into one frame.

Its recognizable details, where all the chairs were linked to one another with a single rope, eminently suggests the suppressive environment in which the children were forced in. Most eye catching of all were the only non-monochrome objects in this piece, the apples on the chairs. (Although I failed to recognize whether the apples were real or not, in its original installation in 1993, the apples were real. Interview) As the only biotic objects in the installation, the significant of deterioration of these apples, combined with a hook running through their cores, symbolized the gradual demoralization of the kids who were forcefully made to attend these residential schools. As an prominent advocate for the First Nations artists, Cardinal Schubert mentioned in an interview that this piece was produced to rid of the vague common perception of the horror the natives endured and to give it a solid image of the horror within the classroom.

In educating and humbling myself through this visit and the descriptive depiction of “The Lesson”, naturally I came to doubt my understandings of the issues that surrounds myself today. Through the opinionated and readily accessible sources available at my disposal, I believe our attention to knowledge and our journey towards the truth has become a unappreciated movement. Partly because our lives are very independent in spirit and diverse in cultural interactions, we associate ourselves in many different efforts to become informed and to engage to make the best decision for the disputes present. Concurrently, these efforts have made it that we are knowledgeable about a wide variety of the issues in the world but lack the critical thinking in what is necessarily the most beneficial action to take. For instance, many of us have heard and know well about the AIDS epidemic prevalent in Africa. But I believe that many of us have accessed these issues solely through data and numbers, articles, and even a column on a textbook. But is this an effective way of keeping ourselves informed? Are they sufficient information to make a decision regarding the problem at hand? Are we not creating our own perception of reality?

As The Lesson symbolically shows us, knowing and acknowledging the existence of a problem is one thing, but whether or not we really are paying attention to the reality and the details of the problem is another. I believe through the depiction of the installation with a personality, the imagery of suppression and untouchable classrooms of residential schools of Cardinal Schubert’s view and arguably many others were distinctively clarified and this gave me a concrete image of what the kids had endured during their times in residential schools.

During the numerous events TRC hosted, such as the valuable first account narrations and the inputs from many diverse groups including the youths of multiple intergenerational cultural discrimination experiences collectively completed a collage of characters within the greater TRC event. Unlike other globally recognized organizations that I have attended to raise awareness of a cultural problem, where the tone of the issues were expressed in a relatively monotone and opinionated manner, the TRC, in its wide angle yet very characteristic approaches, provided to the general population the autonomy to adopt and create ones own experience through the events held throughout the week.

The event gave me a chance to revisit the method of pursuing of the Truth. Ultimately, there are no final distinct goal in reconciliation as we individually carry different meanings associated with the term but it is in the process of finding it that is crucial. And as participants and also members of the reconciliation movement it is vital that we take the initiative to interact with the characters and personalities put forth through exhibits and to contribute our own interpretation and inputs into the larger movement.

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