Project
Because We Need to Live: Exploring Healing at the Intersections of Trauma and Postcolonial Experience in the ‘War on Drugs’ in the Philippines
In 2016, the so-called ‘war on drugs’, a nationwide anti-illegal drugs campaign in the Philippines, has resulted to thousands of alleged extrajudicial killings and thousands more of left-behind families. Among them is a group of widows, mothers and orphans in an impoverished community of Payatas B, Quezon City. How does healing take place and critically understood within this context? The study posits that the experience of survival in the context of ‘war on drugs’ can be understood against the backdrop of the Philippines’ traumatic colonial history. While it critically engages with Filipino social psychological theories and approaches of healing colonial trauma, the study locates an alternative, new understanding of ‘healing/suffering’ that can overcome dominant, silencing perspectives and ineffective practical solutions in the narratives and practices of the people in Payatas B within the context of violence with insights from postcolonial trauma studies.