Sketches on the Affectivity of Sexual Violence Survivorhood

Abstract

Before the revelations of #MeToo, rape existed. It still exists. It will exist for the foreseeable future. But what of those who have experienced sexual violence and come out the other side? What of these ‘survivors’ — how are their lives altered? In this piece of work, I use vignettes inspired by Kathleen Stewart’s (2007) method in Ordinary Affects to explicate on how it feels to be a survivor. Drawing primarily on the postphenomenological framework of Sara Ahmed (2014), I combine both longer academic screeds with shorter, creatively written yet autobiographic scraps to capture the various states of affectivity central to survivorhood, such as shame, anger, abjection, and anxiety. Flashbacks run as a theme throughout, both in the very text itself but also in their importance to the experiencing and re-experiencing of trauma, in their nature as catalysts for recollection and feeling. I also explain, using Berlant (2001), my understanding of trauma as a ‘slow death.’ These sketches, then, reveal the messy, entangled nature of the emotions of survivors, whilst leaving room for a conversation to develop within the fields of affect theory and trauma studies.