Illuminating the Fine Line Between Radicalization and Transformative Learning: Case Studies From Auto/Biographical Narrative Inquiry

There is a fine normative line separating transformative learning and radicalization processes. Using in-depth auto/biographical narrative inquiry, the paper illuminates the importance of self-recognition in both: of feeling seen, understood and validated. But radicalization is ultimately about closure to the other and otherness, and fundamentalist acceptance of one truth and nothing but that truth. Transformative learning, on the other hand, requires an openness to doubt, uncertainty and willingness, forged in relationship, to recognize the other – symbolic and actual – in processes of lifelong and lifewide learning. Recognition too that there can be more than one victim, and that the other suffers and has the right to live and share valued space.