This qualitative case study addresses the use of memories of violence in a workshop with
ten young student leaders in Durban. The pedagogy included the use of guidelines and
gender-based groups as ways of enabling safety. A particularly direct discussion of gender and its relationship to violence followed, though violence in relation to other social
identities was also explored. Walkerdine’s work (2006) on border crossing is used to
analyse the data from the records of discussion and evaluation comments. The argument is that such a pedagogy enabled participants to address some of the sedimented connections that held them to relationships based on violence. Generally, if we understand violence as caught up in social identities, work on memories of violence will require attention to dynamics related to the identities present. While gender’s relation to violence is central in this context, further cases in which the pedagogy is structured around other social identities would extend our understanding.
