Violence, Re-Membering, and Healing: A Textual Reading of Drawings for Projection by William Kentridge

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which insights about the processes and dynamics of psychological health might be located at the intersection between trauma and creativity. To that end, we focus on the animated art series, Drawings for Projection (1989–1999), by the noted South African artist, William Kentridge. Spanning a decade that overlaps the transition from apartheid to the post-apartheid era, Kentridge's art directly addresses themes of violence, reparation, hurt, restoration, and healing. Our intention is not to propose an art therapy but a derivative psychology from the artwork situated in cultural discourse and meaning systems. We provide a hermeneutic reading of Drawings for Projection, and our results suggest that Kentridge's art contains a restorative narrative and function. We identify four narrative aggregations ( Violence as erasure; Re-membering; The breath of the other; and The face of the other) from the data, which we then organise interpretively. This interpretive reading is influenced and informed by the writings of the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. As such, we speculate that healing violent traumata involves an ethical reorientation towards the other in re-membrance, care, and action, or else we run the risk of violence returning in reconstituted form. Movement towards an ethical psychology of the other, rather than an egocentric psychology of the self, is suggested.