Language Justice: Narrative therapy on the fringes of Colombian magical realism— marcela polanco

When problems can talk, dead people can speak, hope can taste, and heart, soul and mind can dance together, a new discursive space is brought to life in therapeutic conversations. In this paper I discuss the reimagination of narrative therapy into my Colombian culture, adopting magical realism as a literary means to engage the imagination in therapeutic conversations. I transgress mainstream rational epistemological traditions of evidence to situate narrative therapy practice on the fringes of convention. I bring to the forefront the ordinary weirdness of narrative therapy conversations via the magical realism’s absurdity and creativity. I stage the discussion in Gabriel García Márquez’s Macondo in his novels to speak the unspeakable, to locate the unlocatable, to touch the untouchable, to hear the inaudible, and to utter the ineffable in our lives.