Moral Injury is a complex phenomenon, the many facets of which are illuminated through multiple conceptual lenses. This session will explore the concept through the lenses of disability and mad studies, the transgenerational memories of immigrant communities, and the Korean concept of shimcheong.
A consistent question in the study of moral injury is whether it should be treated as a medical condition, and a consistent focus of mad studies and disability studies is the downsides of medicalization. Despite this, moral injury has largely not been analyzed through the lens of disability. Taking Tyler Boudreau’s paradigmatic argument against the medicalization of moral injury as a starting point, this paper argues that the insights of mad studies and disability studies provide strong additions to the argument against this medicalization. As Boudreau argues, psychiatry tends to privatize discussions of moral injury and avoid real political or ethical grappling with the conditions that lead to moral injury; medicine similarly privatizes and depoliticizes the social conditions that create disability. Psychiatrized people are also discredited as knowers, which excludes the insights of veterans with moral injury from public discourse.
This presentation combines close textual and performative analysis of comedian Dave Chappelle’s recent work with comparative theological and ethical inquiry, as well as intersectional approaches, to investigate how humor can simultaneously cause and potentially heal moral injury across diverse communities. By focusing on Chappelle’s role as both a provocateur – accused by some of “punching down” on transgender identities – and a cultural figure sought for guidance (notably as host of Saturday Night Live following multiple pivotal U.S. elections), the study integrates perspectives from A. Roy Eckardt, Brian Powers, and Resmaa Menakem to illustrate how comedy serves as a ritual space where communities confront trauma and reimagine manhood. Anchored in Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada’s conceptualization of manhood as an institutionally guarded construct forged through family, community, and faith commitments, the talk highlights Chappelle’s Islamic identity and suggests that comedy, properly understood, can foster new possibilities for moral repair and constructive public discourse.