The Survivor as the Impossible Subject: Tracing Risk and Empowerment Discourse in Self-Defense Education
Content warning: Sexual violence and victim blaming. In this study, I engage my experiences conducting fieldwork as a survivor of sexual violence across two locations of an international self-defense organization. By tracing risk and empowerment discourses across fieldwork, informant interviews, and...
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| Published in | Women's studies in communication Vol. 48; no. 2; pp. 266 - 282 |
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| Main Author | |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
Routledge
03.04.2025
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| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
| ISSN | 0749-1409 2152-999X |
| DOI | 10.1080/07491409.2025.2486236 |
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| Abstract | Content warning: Sexual violence and victim blaming. In this study, I engage my experiences conducting fieldwork as a survivor of sexual violence across two locations of an international self-defense organization. By tracing risk and empowerment discourses across fieldwork, informant interviews, and organizational documents, this study outlines a discursive slippage between risk prevention and victim blaming discourse. These discursive tensions highlight how the affective and temporal distancing associated with empowerment rhetorics is denied to survivors in self-defense education and constructs survivors as impossible subjects. As impossible subjects, survivors' experiences of violence form the very foundations of self-defense education while also being neglected within the space to control the distribution of risk and distance participants from violence. |
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| AbstractList | Content warning: Sexual violence and victim blaming. In this study, I engage my experiences conducting fieldwork as a survivor of sexual violence across two locations of an international self-defense organization. By tracing risk and empowerment discourses across fieldwork, informant interviews, and organizational documents, this study outlines a discursive slippage between risk prevention and victim blaming discourse. These discursive tensions highlight how the affective and temporal distancing associated with empowerment rhetorics is denied to survivors in self-defense education and constructs survivors as impossible subjects. As impossible subjects, survivors' experiences of violence form the very foundations of self-defense education while also being neglected within the space to control the distribution of risk and distance participants from violence. |
| Author | Mulholland, Kaylee |
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| Cites_doi | 10.1111/j.1527-2001.2004.tb01299.x 10.26818/9780814214343 10.1080/1353464032000171118 10.5811/westjem.2012.3.11774 10.1177/1077801210364029 10.1177/03616843211043948 10.1016/B978-0-12-805389-8.00011-6 10.4324/9780429443220 10.1111/j.1471-6402.2006.00280.x 10.1177/0959353514552036 10.1080/02773940509391320 10.1080/03637759109376222 10.1515/9781400850235 10.1016/j.avb.2007.10.001 10.1177/1077801203256202 10.1177/0893318915596204 10.1177/08912416030320030 |
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| References | e_1_3_4_3_1 Oliver K. (e_1_3_4_24_1) 2001 e_1_3_4_9_1 e_1_3_4_8_1 e_1_3_4_7_1 e_1_3_4_6_1 e_1_3_4_5_1 Hanchey J. N. (e_1_3_4_15_1) 2023 e_1_3_4_23_1 Kelly L. (e_1_3_4_19_1) 1988 e_1_3_4_22_1 e_1_3_4_28_1 e_1_3_4_25_1 e_1_3_4_26_1 Tracy S. J. (e_1_3_4_27_1) 2020 Kelly L. (e_1_3_4_20_1) 2012 Lee D. S. (e_1_3_4_21_1) 2007; 14 Ahmed S. (e_1_3_4_2_1) 2015 e_1_3_4_12_1 Caruth C. (e_1_3_4_4_1) 1996 e_1_3_4_13_1 e_1_3_4_10_1 e_1_3_4_11_1 e_1_3_4_16_1 e_1_3_4_17_1 e_1_3_4_14_1 e_1_3_4_18_1 |
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| SubjectTerms | discourse gendered violence self-defense Sexual violence subjectivity |
| Title | The Survivor as the Impossible Subject: Tracing Risk and Empowerment Discourse in Self-Defense Education |
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