Subject Making in Finding Dawn

The theme for this week is subject making, how the reality of sexual assault shapes us as subjects, and how we as subjects shape how we think and feel about sexual assault. I want to reflect on this theme in light of something Janice Acoose said in the Finding Dawn clip we watched in class.

In the documentary she says: “I didn’t call it rape, because I thought that was how Indian women were supposed to be treated.” This statement reveals that a long and continued history of colonization, along with Janice’s own experiences and the social environment and discourses she grew up in created a perception of the Aboriginal subject in which sexual assault is inevitable and expected. Her language reflects an internalization of racialized and spatialized justice that shapes both the understanding of herself as a subject and her understanding of sexual assault. However, the process of subject making is continually evolving. At a later point in the clip, Janice says that in her family, she knew that the violence had to stop with her. Because of Janice’s rediscovered connection to her cultural practices and beliefs, sexual assault and violence stopped being tied to being an Aboriginal women.

I think the internalization and embodiment of racialized and spatialized justice is exasperated by a neoliberal framework that pushes a rhetoric of personal responsibility. In such a framework, the conditions born from a violent colonial history are ignored in order to emphasize the role of individual choice in creating the circumstances you experience. This is particularity harmful in the context of systemic sexual assault experienced by Aboriginal women.

Janice Acoose’s initial conception of subject and sexual assault shared in the clip reflects an understanding shaped by a history of colonialism that promotes racialized justice and a neoliberal framework that insists on having personal responsibility at the centre of circumstances.