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  • Threshold of Human Touch
  • Kate Joyce (bio)

Editor's Note

In the fall of 1997, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela was a clinical psychologist serving on the Human Rights Violations Committee of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In her book A Human Being Died that Night: A South African Woman Confronts the Legacy of Apartheid, she recounts her interviews, conducted in the maximum-security Pretoria Central Prison, with Eugene de Kock, the commanding officer of the state-sanctioned death squads.

Nicknamed "Prime Evil," de Kock acknowledged his crimes to the commission and was ultimately granted amnesty for all but two; for these he was given a two hundred twelve–year sentence for crimes against humanity. At one point early in the series of interviews, de Kock breaks down as he recounts meeting the widows of two black policemen he murdered. As he weeps with remorse, Gobodo-Madikizela instinctively reaches across the table between them and touches his hand to comfort him. Later, this act of compassion launches Gobodo-Madikizela into a profound meditation about her emotions and motives: she wonders whether she has "crossed the moral line" and has actually identified with de Kock, "reaching out with my human hand to touch the physical body that had made evil happen." De Kock himself struggles with what it means to be touched compassionately by a woman who, a year earlier, might easily have been one of his victims.

In her book, Gobodo-Madikizela records her experiences with evil, morality, and forgiveness in deeply thoughtful ways. She writes, "Mercy should be granted cautiously. And yet society must embrace those who, like Eugene de Kock, see and even lead on the road of shared humanity ahead. Our capacity for such empathy is a profound gift in this brutal world we have created for one another as people of different races, creeds, and political persuasions."

The work of photographer Kate Joyce—a sample of which is shown here—extends Gobodo-Madikizela's explorations of forgiveness, compassion, and reconciliation into her own life, and into areas closer to home, including domestic violence and violence directed at oneself. Her work asks whether [End Page 108] these types of trauma can be overcome too. Of Gobodo-Madikizela's book Joyce says, "Pumla's ability to describe the nuances between societal and individual accountability and compassion while weaving between political, personal, and humanitarian realms has inspired this work."

Abusive behavior—whether to oneself or another—is a trespassing, or a betrayal of our humanity. In its many forms it makes us blind and terrified, and we cast aside our sense of interconnectedness. And yet, I feel a deep sadness and compassion not only for the person who is victimized but also for the person who hurts another. It's a kind of compassion that feels suffocating, liberating, and wholly necessary—all at the same time.

Beginning when she was thirteen, a close friend of mine was raped and abused by her mother's boyfriend over a period of five years. During that time, she discovered that if she starved herself, he'd leave her alone. If she was skinny, he found her unappealing. When she became dangerously thin, her family force-fed her, but she learned to purge the unwanted food. Making herself sickly thin kept her relatively safe from the sexual abuse.

After she turned eighteen, she ran away from home and, with the help of relatives, pressed charges against her abuser. He went to trial and was convicted on several counts of rape and physical abuse and sentenced to over thirty years in prison. However, even though my friend was physically safe from her abuser, emotionally she was not; and she continued to struggle with her eating disorder. The day after the trial, she and I were


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Threshold of Human Touch, 2008

Polaroid photographs by Kate Joyce

[End Page 109]

driving back to Santa Fe, and she revealed to me was that ice cream was the best binge-and-purge food. Over the next eight years, her words echoed in my head as I struggled with my own eating disorder. That was the summer of 1999.

I started college...

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