Storytelling from the Heart: A Feminist Decolonizing Humanism

Drawing from feminist Indigenous decolonizing authors who developed critical approaches to the research process, this article elucidates the methodological approach that emerged from the author’s encounter with the former hunger strikers in Israeli prisons in colonized Palestine. This research topic is very sensitive and necessitates empathy, not only to gain access to the research participants but also from an ethical humanist perspective. The author emphasizes the question of empathy in exploring human suffering and discusses the limitation of the language and the search for the “language of the heart” within the framework of a feminist decolonizing research. Articulating some of the research interviews in a storytelling narrative reflected the immersive and empathetic engagement with the research participants. The author foregrounds her storytelling on feminist ethnography and presents these accounts as an example of decolonizing feminist humanism that characterizes the writing from the heart. The author’s approach entails disrupting boundaries between knowledge and humanity and in this manner “writing from the heart” is a critique of the liberal paradigm.