- 291 views
- 544 downloads
Not Being Listened To: A Phenomenological Study with Incarcerated Women
-
- Author / Creator
- Hanlon, Teresa Joan Elder
-
The phenomenon of “not being listened to” is a universal experience, but particularly poignant for women with the lived experience of incarceration. These women’s voices, educator Max van Manen’s most recent (2014) phenomenology text, along with my discipline and practice of spiritual direction inspired me to pursue a definition, rich in meaning and description, of not being listened to. Five qualitative open-structured interviews took place in May, 2018 with women in southern Alberta aged twenty-three to fifty-six. They had been released from jail and interviewed with me for anywhere from thirty minutes to one hour. The interviews had two objectives 1) that the women interviewed be listened to compassionately 2) that their experiences of not being listened to be used as data. Further to the interview data, secondary data includes published poems and prose by, as well as interview write-ups with, incarcerated women in Canada and/or the United States. The research analysis is reflective and descriptive. I highlight the meaning of the phenomenon of not being listened to with anecdotal prose and poetry, explore it through the dimension of darkness, gain insights into the women’s memories from the Greek and Roman Dido, Medea, and Ariadne, and discuss the corporeality of pain and sickness in an incarcerated woman’s not being listened to. Ultimately the phenomenon is a blow to the woman’s identity, her human dignity, and is destructive to her body and soul.
-
- Subjects / Keywords
-
- Graduation date
- Fall 2019
-
- Type of Item
- Thesis
-
- Degree
- Doctor of Ministry
-
- License
- This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.