The Performance of Emancipatory Processes

Autoethnography is an emancipatory process where we use our fingers and hands to manumit, writing to set ourselves free. Autoethnographic practice is akin to spiritual journey. As we write, we connect to living wisdom that guides us in a stepwise manner. In The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, Victor Turner uses ethnographic methods to explore the power inherent in rituals and symbols. Rituals and symbols are used to create liminal states or in-between spaces that allow for transformation to occur. Turner developed the performance theory in anthropology. He also explored ethnography as a performance.

​The Red Book shows his creative process.
https://quote.ucsd.edu/coled/files/2016/06/Turner-and-Turner-Performing-Ethnography.pdf

Autoethnogrpahy can be understood as a transformative performance. When we develop anthro-vision, using the lens of anthropology to gain insights, we experience a form of enlightenment or comprehension of life forces, patterns, and structures. Auto/duoethnographic writing spaces also provide a template for transformation. The Holy Grail Way is a concept that came to me in a dream while I was writing Homing In. My dream, the legend, and a pilgrimage to the Holy Grail in the St. Lorenzo Cathedral in Genova all represent facets of my waking dream process. My writing process provided a template for exploring my dream. It also offered a creative space where I could make connections. Through this creative process I developed a transformative pedagogy to accompany my students. The transformagram pedagogy that I have integrated into my courses at Creighton University and the Valais College of Alternative Medicine provides students with a vehicle for transformation, using narrative means for therapeutic ends. When students engage with their transformagrams they embark on a vessel christened “mediatorship” that transports them to new landscapes of meaning.
Chief Black Elk wrote about his vision in Black Elk Speaks. The Tree of Life that Chief Blackbird describes resonates with The Tree of Life that Carl G. Jung illustrated in The Red Book. There is also a wonderful mosaic representation of The Tree of Life in Otranto, Italy that extends upward to the altar on the Otranto Cathedral’s floor, growing under worshipper’s feet. I designed a stained-glass window with the tree of life in the center of the circle. It is in our living room, reminding me of the Seven Arrows medicine shield and Jung’s illustrations in The Red Book.
The Tree of Life is a symbol stemming from our collective consciousness. It is a symbol that can be understood as an archetype. It roots us in the Earth to strengthen our ability to flourish. Living in/on Earthship requires rooting deeply so to grow-up high. Our symbolic landscapes of meaning allow us to make sense of life in difficult times. The meaning-making process triggers actions that allow us to enter in to cultural performances that transform, transcend, and transfigure lifeforms.
Black Elk’s vision can be interpreted as a warning of Anthropocene and climate change. His vision quest led him to revive Sacred Pipe ceremonies for the spiritual renewal of the Native American people whose tribes had been devastated by Euro-American conquerors.
https://www.siouxreplications.com/extended-museum-articles/black-elks-pipe-and-pipe-bag

Jung had visions of devastation before World War I that plunged him into darkness but ultimately gave rise to his questing process that brought forth his psychoanalytical concepts. The Red Book shows his creative process. 
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/may/29/cg-jungs-the-tree-of-life-1922

Gandhi is yet another important figure who had a powerful vision of social justice. His emancipatory process used the Spinning Wheel or Charkha to resist and overcome the British colonizers. He used civil disobedience and ancient symbols to liberate his people. The Swadeshi movement allowed the Indian people to connect with faith, resilience and self-sufficiency.
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/BAUBNSJPyMyVJg
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Each vision emerged from a cultural perspective that gave rise to different forms of spiritual questing and liberation through a performance of transformation. These transformational performances can be understood as passageways.
I refer to The Holy Grail Way as a passageway that allows us to walkthrough our conflict and illness narratives. The walkthrough is both a sacred passageway and emancipatory performance. These examples of emancipatory processes all demonstrate different cultural pathways that create a space of flexibility and reflexivity that open to new ways of being in the world. This is how life-o-grams become transformagrams.
Each era has examples of conflicts that play out on the international stage. I pray that the Ukrainian people and their neighbors will find a way to resist the current Russian invasion in an empowering process of liberation. The Serfs were only liberated in 1861 by Tsar Alexander the II in the Emancipation Manifesto. At that time almost 40% of the people were serfs, peasants that were the property of nobility, tied to the land in serfdom.
Manumitting means freeing oneself from slavery. May the process of manumitting continue, overcoming current forms of tyranny, liberating the people, and guaranteeing democratic rights and self-determination. May the brave hearts of the Ukrainian people be supported in tangible and effective ways by the united strength of Western democracies in this current emancipation process.
Emancipatory processes are emerging from our global conflict and illness narrative as we move out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The lines of contention that were revealed during the pandemic have become open armed conflicts in Eastern Europe. The pandemic has played a role in the configuration of conflicts and certain conflicts may even have been accelerated. The performance of the insurrection in January 2021 is an example of anti-structure beating down the doors of political structures like the Capitol. Now we see other political conflicts that are emerging and breaking down borders and challenging national sovereignty in this current existential battle between democracy and autocracy.