000 02755nab a22002897a 4500
999 _c8462
_d8462
005 20250625151650.0
008 231211s2022 -nz|| |||| 00| 0 eng d
040 _aAFVC
100 _aRoss, Lily K.
_912468
245 _aThe survivor imperative :
_bsexual violence, victimhood and neoliberalism
260 _bChicago University Press,
_c2022
500 _aSigns: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2022, 48(1)
520 _aThe #MeToo movement provides an opportunity to critique the victim and survivor labels as they are deployed in everyday conversations, media, and interdisciplinary contexts. In this essay, I use personal experience to examine discourses of victimhood, survivorship, their binary formulation, and the narrative arc figured to connect them. Competing neoliberal and Christian discourses load the victim label with contradictory imperatives: when victims adhere to one set of expectations, they necessarily violate others and risk deleterious social consequences. Meanwhile, the development of the survivor label in psychology and politics following World War II, and the uptake of the term in feminist theory and activism, render survivorship a valorized alternative to victimhood. I develop the survivor imperative to critique the directive that victim/survivors perform postvictimization identity in a manner that is socially acceptable within neoliberal hegemony. I build on Suzanne McKenzie-Mohr and Michelle N Lafrance’s notion of tightrope talk to attend to my own speech as a victim/survivor and resist recuperation into dominant discourses. This essay draws from personal records of interpersonal conversations, building on Joan W. Scott’s call to take experience as a starting place for analysis while working to advance Sara Ahmed’s challenge to the theory/experience divide. I also use Rebecca Stringer’s neoliberal victim theory to consider how overemphasis on personal responsibility is problematic when gender-based violence remains a pervasive, systemic threat, even as #MeToo continues to reverberate. (Author's abstract). Record #8462
650 _aATTITUDES
_970
650 _aFEMINISM
_9256
650 0 _910230
_aPOLITICS
650 4 _aSEXUAL VIOLENCE
_9531
650 _aTHESES
_9606
650 _aVICTIM/SURVIVORS' VOICES
_99763
650 0 _aVICTIMS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE
_96716
651 4 _aNEW ZEALAND
_92588
773 0 _tSigns: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2022, 48(1)
830 _aSigns: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2022, 48(1)
_912469
856 _uhttps://doi.org/10.1086/720413
_yDOI: 10.1086/720413
856 _uhttp://hdl.handle.net/10523/10076
_yRead author's related PhD (Otago) thesis
942 _2ddc
_cARTICLE
_hnews125