The group as liminal space: Recognition and reparation for political trauma survivors

The article unwraps the concepts of political trauma, recognition, and reparation; it discusses how victims experience group support as a recognising-reparative space from traumatic experiences. The goal is to demonstrate that group spaces can become not only instrumental in academic or therapeutic approaches but also positive catalysts for agency, recovery, and a politicising element for victims of human rights abuses to experience recognition and reparation. For survivors of political violence, the group space becomes a liminal space between the individual and the social, where the long-isolated suffering is socialised and politicised again, and where subjectivity has restored confidence, received, and provided recognising experiences, and facilitates the elaboration of the injured individual. I aim to demonstrate that group settings may become supportive and trustful environments in which new meanings to the experiences of horror might be subjectively and politically recognised and re-signified. This article explores the subjective and psychosocial conditions, as well as potential risks and setbacks of group processes, to be meaningful for survivors. The research is based on empirical data from seven focus groups composed of victims of human rights violations from the Truth Commission of Ecuador (TCE) and a sequence of eight in-depth focus groups with torture survivors. The study’s main conclusions are that working in group formats with trauma survivors may become a psychosocial and political recognising and reparative space as a response to traumatic events, and explore how group support may become a positive catalyst for recovery.