The Subversive Power of Survivor Rhetoric: An Innovative Archive of Survivor Discourse in New York Magazine

Abstract

On July 26, 2015, New York magazine published its cover story, “‘I’m No Longer Afraid’: 35 Women Tell Stories about Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen,” written by Noreen Malone, and an associated portfolio by Amanda Demme. Six months in the making, this print and multimedia digital project included thirty-five photos and print testimonies of women sexually assaulted by Bill Cosby, along with six video testimonies. I investigate how this popular culture archive of survivor voices tells the story of sexual violence from within women’s lived experiences. More specifically, I argue that this novel archive of survivor testimony largely intervenes in dominant discourses and builds an alternative community history by reworking the role of the expert mediator, reckoning with racial structures of disbelief, illuminating cultural capital as entrenching disbelief, asserting survivors’ power to name their condition, and reclaiming survivor stories.