From brain “scar” to “bat shit crazy”: negotiating the madness of sexual violence discourse
Yapp, Emma (2024) From brain “scar” to “bat shit crazy”: negotiating the madness of sexual violence discourse. BioSocieties , ISSN 1745-8552. (In Press)
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Abstract
This article analyses how people who identify with psychiatric diagnoses in England and Wales make sense of and talk about their experiences of sexual violence. I examine how interview participants engaged with the hegemonic trauma discourse, as well as the consequences of this for meaning-making, affective pain, and the feminist imperative to ‘speak out’. The hegemonic trauma discourse is characterised by leaving a psychological ‘scar’; is premised on a sudden interruption to a ‘good life’; and is considered pathologically unspeakable without intervention. This discourse was both validating and affectively painful for participants, and interventions targeting dissociation were helpful for assuaging distress. However, it was additionally normative and exclusionary, and did not fulfil the political promise of ‘speaking out’, as all participants faced myriad socio-political denial.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | Psychological trauma, rape, (ab)normality, diagnosis, mental (dis)ability |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences |
| Research Centres and Institutes: | Humanities, Birkbeck Institute for the (BIH) |
| Depositing User: | Emma Yapp |
| Date Deposited: | 31 May 2024 13:21 |
| Last Modified: | 30 Jun 2024 00:10 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/53608 |
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