Liberation and Self-care
This week our class worked through Alcoff’s discussion of survivor discourse together and was introduced to the intriguing concept of recuperation. Alcoff states that using language to express things simultaneously “inscribe[s] them into hegemonic structures and produce docile, self-monitoring bodies who willingly submit themselves to (and thus help to create and legitimate) authoritative experts” (Alcoff). For me, and I’m sure many others in the class, this point really complicated the idea of “liberation” through “talking things out.”
I believe that, in general, it is a widely held belief that speaking out and confession are meant to function as liberatory acts for the person who is carrying the “weight" of a heavy experience. As Professor Nixon mentioned in class today, there is a prevalent discourse around the “freeing” and “liberating” aspect of speaking out as a survivor of sexual assault. As mentioned in class, this was evident in Oprah’s interview with Tyler Perry as he stated that he felt “lighter” after confessing about his own childhood experience of sexual violence on her talk show.
I think that it’s important to note that this “liberation” is often connoted as a positive act because it frees the survivor from difficulties such as carrying the burden alone and suppressing the emotions in the aftermath. Confessing is supposed to function as an aid to the healing process by reclamation of voice and control over what has happened. The common narrative around liberation states that confession is good because it is centred on maximizing benefit of the individual who was victimized. However, we know that this statement may not be completely true. As Alcoff explains, there are many ways that bringing sexual assault experiences into discourse result in an undermining of survivors’ agency and voice through recuperation.
This lead me to think about the way that “self-care” complicates liberation and feminist trajectories. If speaking out is meant to primarily empower survivors and create visibility, how can we critique the shape that the discourse looks like around someone else’s individual experience? Furthermore, if speaking out truly is survivor centred and intended to help them reclaim power then it is evidently ironic for anyone to dictate what another’s self-care an self-healing is supposed to look and sound like.
As many of my classmates have already mentioned, the Chrissie Hynde article from today demonstrates this paradox that many feminists may find themselves in. Hynde, as a survivor of sexual assault, shared her story as well as conclusions about that story to the world and received a great deal of feminist backlash for victim blaming. On one hand, from a more general/theoretical point of view, Hynde’s statements may be viewed as highly problematic because they subscribe to/perpetuate the very rape myths that feminists aim to dismantle. However, on the other hand, Hynde had obviously found a way to come to terms with her own experience and although her self-care may not fit into the ideal feminist framework of healing, it functioned effectively for her personally. I found this very similar to the example from the Campbell article about the woman who pretended to enjoy her rape in order to take care of herself in the moment.
I’ve actually struggled with this quite a bit and have no clear answer to any of the points I have raised so I would definitely love to hear any of the insights that others may have about this.
I definitely hear what you're thinking through here - if a survivor or victim hasn't spoken out, have they adequately been taking care of themselves?
ReplyDeleteLike you've said, "confession is good" - I feel like mainstream feminist discourse (in academia, the media, social media) really encourages and supports those who speak out - which is great. What I find problematic is the way some react to those who speak out in a way which is not endorsed by mainstream feminism. As negative as it sounds, I feel like mainstream feminist and survivor discourse has created a slight dichotomy between those who speak out on the terms of mainstream feminism, and those who do not speak out, or do so in a conflicting way. Here, I think it is useful to think of Foucault's second claim about speech - speaking out may not be liberatory if it reinscribes hegemonic norms. Maybe it's not only the experts on Oprah recuperating survivor speech?
My opinions are a bit jumbled at the moment as well, but in my mind I keep coming back to the presentation from the Sexual Assault Centre at the start of the semester. Everyone's experiences, and everyone's ways of working through their experiences are going to look different. I think it is potentially dangerous to have this dominant discourse within feminism that emphasises the importance of speaking out as a method of self care.
It seems ironic that you bring up the topic of self-care, because I didn’t realize until just now that it is strangely missing from our survivor discourse discussions. Survivorship often becomes about returning a sense of power to the individual who has “lost” it or has had it taken from them. While this likely resonates with many survivors, others might feel that this does not define their own experience with sexual assault. Survivor discourse might be particularly alienating for these individuals because they do not understand themselves in a position of powerlessness and self-care might look different for them. Forcing survivors to conceive their experiences within a framework that requires them to label their experience, “move on”, or gain back something they have “lost, seems recuperative and speaks to the way dominant discourse operates. When survivors are told how to understand their sexual assault experiences and told what to do with them, alternative methods of self-care that people engage with (or might be interested in exploring) are dismissed. In this way, another important conversation around sexual assault becomes (often unintentionally) silenced, resulting in a reliance on dominant narratives instead of creating and sharing new ones that might better reflect the actual realities of survivorship.
ReplyDeleteI also return to the sexual assault presentation at the beginning of the term, because individualized self-care (no matter how it looks) was central to the conversation-whether you are a sexual assault survivor, ally, or researcher. What I appreciated most about this conversation were the various ways that people “deal” with sexual assault. Some of the “coping mechanisms” mentioned were things that we do not usually attribute to self-care, such as self-harm. The presenter recognized that this was a valid response, and for some people, a form of care. While there might be more “healthy” ways of dealing with an experience of sexual assault, it is important to remember that this might be someone’s own understanding of what it means to take part in self-care during their own process of healing. I think survivor discourse is most effective when it addresses that caring for oneself looks different for everyone- people respond in a variety of ways through their journey of healing. I understand self-care as an individual, multi-step process that might require a lot of trial and error. Self-care might include speaking out, disclosing or confessing… or it might not. In my opinion, the goal of survivor discourse should not be “liberation”, but attending to a vast spectrum of self-care experiences.