Resources Blog posts by Victoria can be found here: https://
victoriacantons.livejournal.com Also see: Cantons, E. (2012) If You Really Loved Me. London: AUK Authors.
Making an art of failure: Hamilton Kennedy
I’m a user of mental health services. I have
been for some time and, unfortunately, I probably will be for some time more. I am also a narrative practitioner and I’m wanting to smash the divide between these two things. Doing so will probably involve its ups and downs and its fair share of failures. This article is about making an art of failure and acknowledging lives that are not ordinary. For me, learning any new skill or idea
I realise I have been forgetting the most important things, Victoria Cantons, 2018, oil on linen on board 19 x 14 cm
Victoria Cantons (b. 1969 London), is a BA Painting graduate of Wimbledon College of Arts (2017) and Turps Art School (2018) and is currently attending MFA Painting at Slade School of Art (2018-20). Victoria received the Felix Slade Scholarship (2018). Victoria has participated in shows internationally and is in various private collections. Victoria also happens to be a woman who is transsexual, she legally transitioned and began medical treatment aged 39 in 2009. Victoria works across multiple disciplines, connecting and disconnecting psychological boundaries in the relationships we have with ourselves and others.
www.victoriacantons.com instagram: @victoriacantons
Lizette Nolte is a cis-gendered, straight woman who works as clinical psychologist and systemic psychotherapist.
l.nolte@herts.
ac.uk Twitter: @lizettenolte
and applying it in my life or practice is challenging. It often poses two specifi c questions. “Am I doing this correctly?” and “If I am doing this correctly, am I doing it well enough?” These concerns are amplifi ed if it involves doing it with other people. Further again, if I am doing it in the context of my work as a peer support worker in a psychiatric inpatient hospital and in the community. This is because I know I am occupying a privileged position of sharing in people’s lives, receiving stories of suff ering, hope and triumph. As with many things, over time this
has become easier as I have become more confi dent in narrative practice. It has also become easier due to a shift in my understanding. I have found a sort of confi dence in knowing that I am utilising narrative practice in a way that is diff erent from how it has been practised in the past. I am innovating ways of being a peer support worker that are uniquely my own.
These are not ordinary lives One of the dangers of an increasingly
neoliberal world, or perhaps inherent to capitalism altogether, is particular dominant discourses. There are a few particularly prevalent discourses present in the fi eld that I practise in. One is that medication is necessary (perhaps, mandatory) for addressing mental health concerns. Another is that people need to have a sense of structure, routine and sets of ‘normal’ behaviours and activities – which often means working and/or study. These are often just polite versions of the way people denigrate those who don’t work by saying, “Get a job”. Of course, I’ve just made a couple of
assertions, and if I was to explicitly pose these to the people I work with, to impose
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my worldview onto them, it would often be unrelatable. It is, however, important for dominant discourses to be rendered visible. And I’ve found that it’s through failure that this becomes possible. Michael White (2002) wrote that, “Never
before has the sense of failure to be an adequate person been so freely available to people, and never before has it been so willingly and routinely dispensed” (p. 33). This rings true to me. Many people have indeed said to me, “I am a failure”, or “I feel like a failure”. And I also feel very much like a failure, insofar as I have not achieved many of the expectations placed upon me. However, there is at least some part of me that is buoyed as a broadly queer person, by reading Jack Halberstam’s Queer Art of Failure: “…we will wander, improvise, fall short, and move in circles. We will lose our way, our cars, our agenda, and possibly our minds, but in losing, we will fi nd another way of making meaning” (Halberstam, 2011, p. 25). I have been able to use my own
experience of failure in the hope of broadening other people’s experiences. First, I have aimed to bring into our conversations that, if we feel that we have failed to live a ‘normal life’, this is not a refl ection of us not succeeding or thriving in other ways. David Denborough (2014) recounts his
experience of a narrative gathering of people with ‘mental health struggles’. The phrase they used that I found particularly astute was, “These are not ordinary lives we are living” (p. 163). This statement inspired me and allowed for transport in my own understandings of myself and those with whom I work. My experience has been that those who
experience psychiatric hospitalisation are readily able to recognise that their lives are not ordinary. Borrowing from this, I have begun to implement in my work, ‘not ordinary lives’ questions such as: • “If we acknowledge that others’ expectations of us do not fi t well with us, what kinds of things do you now look forward to/want to work towards/are attracted to” and
• “how did you come to know that this is what you wanted for your life?”
Context 164, August 2019
Making an art of failure: ‘These are not ordinary lives’
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