Letting Our Hearts Break - On Facing the “Hidden Wound” of Human Supremacy

Oct 15, 2026

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The paper argues that education must be grounded in the willingness to experience compassion when others suffer, treating compassion as an ethical imperative. It exposes psycho-social processes of shame as “dark matters” that inferiorize and subjugate those who express such compassion for the more-than-human world. Drawing on the author’s life stories and analyses of fiction, it explores cultural wounds produced by human supremacy and develops a pedagogy of responsibility rooted in deep love and heartbreak.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryReligion & Spirituality

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Ethical education, compassion, and heartbreak

Hidden wound, shame, and human supremacy

Pedagogy of responsibility and responsibility through suffering

Letting Our Hearts Break: On Facing the “Hidden Wound” of Human Supremacy Rebecca Martusewicz, Eastern Michigan University, United States Abstract In this paper I argue that education must be defined by our willingness to experience compassion in the face of others’ suffering and thus by an ethical imperative, and seek to expose psycho-social processes of shame as dark matters that inferiorize and subjugate those expressing such compassion for the more-than-human world. Beginning with stories from my own life, I examine works of fiction including J. M Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals (1999) and Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow (2000), as well as Berry’s reflection on his family’s legacy of racism in The Hidden Wound (2010), to explore the deep cultural wound caused by human supremacy. I further argue the need for claiming deep love and thus heartbreak in the face of suffering as the foundations for a pedagogy of responsibility. Résumé Dans cet article, j’avance l’argument que l’éducation doit être définie par notre empressement à ressentir de la compassion face à la souffrance des autres, parcet impératif éthique. Ainsi l’éducation doit mettre à la vue les processus psychosociaux de la honte en tant que questions sombres qui infériorisent ceux et celles qui expriment une telle compassion pour un monde plus humain. En commençant avec des histoires tirées de mapropre vie, j’examinedes ouvrages defiction incluant The Lives of Animals (1999) par J.M. Coetzee and Jayber Crow (2000) de Wendell Berry, ainsi que la réflexion de Wendell Berry sur sa famille et son héritage racisterelaté dans The Hidden Wound (2010), ceci afin d’explorer les blessures culturellescauséespar l’expression d’une suprématie humaine.Je démontre aussi la nécessité d’assumer une affection profonde, et donc le déchirement devant la souffrance, comme étant le fondement d’unepédagogie de la responsabilité . Keywords: compassion, suffering, more-than-human, ethics, shame For whatever reason, good or bad, I have been unwilling until now to open in myself what I have known all along to be a wound—a historical wound, prepared centuries ago to come alive in me at my birth like a hereditary disease, and to be augmented and deepened by my life. -The Hidden Wound (Berry, 2010, p. 3) And yet, all the good I know is in this, that a man might so love this world that it would break his heart. ayber Crow (Berry, 2000, p. 254) Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 19, 2014 31 Introduction What would it take to educate in such a way that opens up our capacities to love the world—the whole world—to the point of heartbreak, that is to the point of real embodied distress or agony? What potential does such suffering hold, and what stands in the way of these possibilities? I ask these questions from the conviction that an ethical relationship to the world—to other humans and to the more-than-human members 1 with whom we share this planet—requires that we experience pain in the face of the other’s pain, that we suffer as we bear witness to another’s unnecessary suffering. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist scholars teach us, such suffering is the basis for the development of compassion that can lead to an active responsibility for the well-being of all the members of our communities. Specifically, I am interested in how teachers and their students can engage in a pedagogy of responsibility where caring and compassion require that we open our hearts, our spirits, our sensual capacities, even our bodies to the suffering being caused across the planet by social and ecological violence. As we work to open our hearts, we expose what Wendell Berry (2010) identifies as a “hidden wound” within our communities and in our collective psyches, if such a “place” or condition could be identified. This “wound” is our ongoing immersion in and conscious, or unconscious, acceptance of the violence of human supremacy2 and its discursive allies within“a logic of domin

FAQs

What does the paper say education must be based on?

Education must be defined by the willingness to experience compassion in the face of others’ suffering, functioning as an ethical imperative.

How does the author describe the role of shame?

The paper presents shame as a psycho-social process that acts as a “hidden wound,” inferiorizing and subjugating those who express compassion.

Which works are used to explore the cultural wound of human supremacy?

The paper examines J. M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals and Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow, and it draws on Berry’s reflection in The Hidden Wound to discuss cultural wounds tied to human supremacy.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by Muffet