Paper presentation at the ‘Politics of Listening’ Conference
Sydney, November 2018
In this presentation I seek to reflect on the journey of working with 8 queer refugee women as a part of my PhD thesis What does it mean to be a queer refugee woman? A Collective self-discovery of lived experiences through trauma and agency. In this presentation I want to discuss how feminist and queer theorising of trauma has a potential to bring to surface those experiences that were silenced because of one’s gender, sexuality, and/or biopolitical governance of bodies in situations of exile and asylum-seeking. I also aim to critique current approaches to witnessing within refugee activism that result in re-traumatisation of people with the lived experience. In doing so, I attend to my position from within to reflect on the reciprocal listening to what our traumas open up.