Incorporeal transformations*

I tried this idea out during some training I delivered recently, and it went down quite well. Then yesterday I was talking to an advocacy scheme manager and a trainee social worker who also really appreciated the thought, so despite the unwieldy title...

'Incorporeal' means 'not of the body', or perhaps more importantly for us 'not visible', or often even 'not communicable'. So these sorts of transformations are hard to see or describe, but they are very important, and we can certainly feel them and recognise them.

My favourite example comes from a novel called Remembering Babylon by the Australian writer David Malouf. The book focuses on Gemme, a character caught between worlds and spaces, but in this scenario Gemme is not so important. What is important is that he is the excuse for Janet (13) and her younger sister to go often to tea at Mrs Hutchence's house. They would be joined by Mrs Hutchence's niece Leona, and two local lads, George and Hector (all around 18 years old). One day, a day apparently like any other, the children and the young adults are playing their games around the tea table, Leona in charge as usual, when Janet suddenly starts to see things she has never seen before. In particular she sees the way Leona is managing George and Hector, and the way George and Hector are competing for her favour. Suddenly a whole range of subtle signals becomes visible to her as this new understanding settles in. Janet feels as if she has changed (transformed).

I would say (and I don't think Janet or Malouf would disagree) that she had learned something in the true sense of the word: like learning to ride a bike, Janet now has access to some knowledge that is 'in her body' that was not there before.

If that is a bit difficult to understand, think back to your own experiences of learning to become an advocate. At first there are some rules and methods; you see other advocates working, but it's generally very like what you've seen before from social workers or whatever. At some point however it's likely that something will have 'clicked', that you stopped asking such directed questions of your partners for example, and could now feel the advantage of people struggling to express their problems in their own voices. Or maybe you didn't have this moment of realisation, but you can still look back and feel a transformation in your practice between starting out as an advocate and now.

The reason for my interest in incorporeal transformations is threefold:

1. How does it affect the people we work with?
2. How does it affect the way we work?
3. How does it affect the way we learn (about advocacy)?
   

I will end with some brief thoughts in response to these questions.

Many of the people we work with are lacking in knowledge in one way or another. They may not know what they want, what they are entitled to, or how to get it. The traditional model of knowledge says 'give someone the information so they can know it', but again and again we see that giving people information is not enough. What is needed is an incorporeal transformation where that knowledge gets into people's bodies: so they can feel able to ask for something, so they can feel like they know what they want, so they can feel that when they look at things around them they are more confident, understanding, and independent.

I think our work as advocates often addresses these issues already. The pioneers of advocacy were pathetic in the true sense of the word (in touch with feelings and experience - it still has this meaning in French), and their methodology naturally reflected these needs. We are not advice workers, we don't deal with information in the same way as other professionals. It is still beneficial to have an awareness of the feeling of incorporeal transformations however because this helps us to see them when they happen, and it helps us to see that if we are seeking to support change, this is one of the best ways for this change to happen in our partners.

Finally, in terms of learning, the traditional approach as still seen in schools is to give information and then test the memory. This is a very 'intellectual' approach (in the crude sense of the word) and is completely inappropriate for large sections of society, including many advocates and other caring professionals. I believe that part of the reason for the delays in agreeing national standards, definitions and training programmes for advocacy is advocates' natural aversion to these traditional educational approaches. The advantage of our current approach, although it often creates some confusion at the start, is that it opens itself to that moment after a bit of practice wher it all clicks, and we have a much deeper and more physical understanding of the process as a result.

There are many alternative approaches to education which implicitly value these sorts of approaches - check out those of Freire or Steiner for example.

* Note on title: I could choose a more readily understandable name for this concept, but the advantage of 'incorporeal transformations' is that it is unlikely to be confused for something else, and hopefully the idea will stick in people's minds. There is also a philosophical precedent for the term in the work of Deleuze & Guattari.