Violence and the Cultural Politics of Trauma

Abstract

Through a broad reading of various cultural institutions and artifacts across North America and Britain, Jane Kilby looks at the political implications of speaking out about incest and rape contemporarily and explains the implications of how such testimony has drastically changed since the late 1970s and 1980s. Kilby says she is [L]ooking to develop a language that can sustain our understanding of victim experience precisely when securing recognition of that experience is a tenuous possibility (3). She analyzes the debates on recovered memory therapy, false memory syndrome, and the critiques of various visual and literary pieces created by survivors of incest and rape. Throughout these sections of her book, Kilby’s own stance is only eluded to, showing her desire to move through these debates, avoiding forever and forlornly acting out...traumatic history (76) instead of offering a political response to trauma culture. Smartly, she rarely provides the details of traumatic experiences thus making sure her work does not fall into the category of work she frequently criticizes as peep-show mentality (119), that is, being fascinated with the details of abuse, and which does not move towards the political treatment of trauma.