ackhurst, molly r. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8607-5238 (2024) When belief and care morphs into a carceral politic: re-thinking feminist attachments to the figure of the wounded survivor and being “survivor-led”. In: LCCT 2024: 11th annual London Conference in Critical Thought (LCCT), 28th - 29th June 2024, University of Greenwich, London. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

In the fight for justice for survivors of sexual violence, much critical contemporary feminist anti-violence work has emboldened carceral systems, structures, and logics. This is despite such work simultaneously recognising police and prisons as sites of injustice. The result is a cyclical and stagnating state of stuckness whereby, despite consistent attempts to enact change to “get justice”, justice for the vast majority of survivors of sexual violence remains elusive. This paper argues that one reason for this stuckness is an emotional and political attachment to the “figure of the wounded survivor”, and in turn to being “survivor-led”. To make this claim, I offer reflections from my own time in feminist sexual violence support work, alongside analysis of empirical work conducted with critical feminist academic texts, and interviews with twenty-three frontline sexual violence workers in England, Wales, and Scotland. In interrogating the ethics and risks of a “survivor-led” politics and epistemology I contend that it is essential to develop different ways to respond to survivors, and foster alternative approaches and methodologies, that are not “led by” survivors, but which are instead centred by them. These approaches must recognise the importance of believing and respecting survivors, but also foster a shifting away from the immovability, or stickiness, that the “survivor-led” politics produces. Given the increasing role of feminist politics in animating carcerality across the globe I argue that these attachments are in urgent need of reckoning with.

Item Type:	Conference or Conference Paper (Poster)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	sexual violence, feminist politics, care, belief, survivor-led
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) K Law > K Law (General)
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences > School of Law & Criminology (LAC)
Related URLs:	http://www.psi-web.org/2024/02/09/lcct20... http://nordmedianetwork.org/latest/upcom... http://allevents.in/london/london-confer...
Last Modified:	05 Mar 2025 12:52
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/49949

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