Wake Up Strong: From Terra Nullius to Recognition

In this paper the importance of psychological recognition as a life and death matter is developed referencing the writings of psychoanalysts Winnicott and Benjamin and philosopher Hegel. I suggest that radical hope, a notion developed by Lear and radical doubt can provide a mode of story transformation from a state of mind of terra nullius to one of recognition. Staying in the “eye of the storm,” a place Bion asks us to be – a place inherent in the world of trauma – can become a holding place of lived and living emotional experience, metamorphosing raging turbulence into dynamic anchorage, dialectic potential spaces and fluid, vital, new beginnings. I show how the Men's Tjilirra Movement (MTM) embodies recognition, continuity, connections, aliveness and transformations from a world of trauma and cultural rupture.