Breathing: Violence In, Peace Out (Peace and Conflict Series)

Breathing: Violence In, Peace Out investigates the long-term impact of transgenerational trauma and of personal and collective experiences with war and other acts of collective violence. It also looks at the possibilities for the emergence of more peaceful futures, including the individual and social practices necessary to bring them about.

It explores the links between personal histories and world events and helps us to understand life's dualities: violence and peace, self and other, safety and threat, stability and change, oppressing and freeing, past and future.

The text moves between two voices, as Milojevic journeys between the personal ('breathing in'), which describes her family's experience with violence, while the second academic voice ('breathing out') tries to make sense of it. The rhythm created in the text by inhaling and exhaling is used as a device to reflect not only what we take from the world but also what we give back to it.

Milojevic asks: Can we go back and function in a 'normal way' after the massive trauma that all wars and situations of life-threatening violence inevitably bring with them? And what happens to the people who are impacted by them, once these events are over?

Breathing: Violence In, Peace Out is an inquiry into alternative futures as Milojevic explores a range of possibilities, both for each of us personally, and for the world.