Indelible

Many years ago I grew away from the evangelical Christian faith that had grounded my life (before and beyond death) since my early teens. Or so I thought: the stories my body now tell confront me with the sense that I have – secretly, ambivalently – held on to elements of that faith. Over recent times, through and since my doctoral studies, I have embraced poststructural and Deleuzian sensibilities. These, one might think, run right up against the entrenched binaries and certainties that remain indelibly inscribed. The narrative of progress and development I have been telling myself over the decades – that I have not just grown away but grown up – is no longer tenable. This paper I examine my doubt at whether I doubt. Amongst the most disturbing stories is one of being beaten in God’s name. Its scars remain. I revisit this story in an attempt to dwell more fully in the pain (and pleasure?) of cane on flesh. How am I to (at)tend (to) those scars? What are their meanings? I draw from the psychodynamic and poststructural theoretical frameworks that seem to have failed me, in inquiring into the political, cultural, emotional, psychological and spiritual processes at play in this current disturbance.