Memory's Pillar and the Experience of Sexual Trauma Commentary on Janice Haaken's Pillar of Salt

In Pillar of Salt, Janice Haaken questions the claims of the advocates of recovered memory by exploring memory through a psychoanalytic lens as a process of reconfiguring the past in the light of present needs and desires. Resisting reductive formulations, she examines contemporary stories of abuse and concludes that, whether factual or not, the recovered-memory syndrome that has so starkly emerged in the past 20 years is true to women's experience of oppression within an abusive patriarchal culture. Read within the framework of subjectivity and meaning, recovered memories provide women with dramatic self-representations that give narrative structure to the truths of their lives.     

New Possibilities for Integration and Unification in Interdisciplinary Studies Commentary on Janice Haaken's Pillar of Salt

Janice Haaken's ambitious and wide-ranging interdisciplinary work synthesizes a large and diverse array of profoundly complex subjects. By focusing primarily on her psychotherapy work, I demonstrate close kinship between her therapeutic attitudes, beliefs, and values and my own. My beliefs and values are psychoanalytic, and I find that similar or compatible ones motivate Haaken's feminist, social activist, and radical academic sensibilities. Thus, underlying common attitudes, beliefs, and values between these seemingly diverse areas and psychoanalysis contribute significantly to the authority, unity, and integrative power in Haaken's interdisciplinary work.     

Child Sexual Abuse: Community Concerns in Urban Tanzania

The aim of this study was to explore community perceptions about child sexual abuse in Tanzania. Thirteen focus group discussions were conducted with adult community members. The core category, children's rights challenged by lack of agency, was supported by eight categories. Aware but distressed portrayed feelings of hopelessness, lack of trust in the healthcare and legal systems reflected perceived malpractice, decreased respect for children's rights referred to poor parental care and substance abuse, myths justifying CSA illustrated cultural beliefs to rationalize child sexual abuse, disclosure threatened by fear of stigma and discriminationaligned the manifestations that prevent disclosure, actions driven by economic circumstances described the economical dependence of victims, urging a change in procedures reflected informants' wish to ally with local governance and pressure groups, and willingness to act indicated the community's role in supporting victims. The study showed how lack of agency calls for efforts to increase children's human rights at all levels.     

'Totalitarianism', Treason and Containment in Catch-22 (and 1984)

Abstract

Critical writing on Catch-22 has often centred (quite naturally and understandably, it must be said) on concepts such as paradox, black humour and the absurdity of the human condition. Although these approaches have certainly not been without profit and have produced interesting readings, they have also tended to obscure, under the generic nature of such frameworks, the novel's patent political concerns — concerns which, moreover, are not at all unrelated to the usual critical preoccupations. In a similar way, although Catch-22 criticism has often relied heavily on the detection of literary allusions and influences at work in the text, a most obvious source of influence seems to have been generally ignored. This essay attempts to offer a different reading of Catch-22 based on the assertion that what the novel is really about is 'totalitarianism'. Its starting point is, therefore, a parallel reading bringing together Heller's best-known book with one of the central literary texts on 'totalitarianism' — George Orwell's 1984. Focusing initially on the similar way(s) in which the two novels construct what is called a 'totalitarian' atmosphere, the essay proceeds to briefly demonstrate the bearing of the 'totalitarian' problematic on another important '60s novel, E. L. Doctorow's Welcome to Hard Times, and to offer a fuller reading of Catch-22, including a summary excursion into the difficult question of how the student of '60s American fictions should approach the concept of 'totalitarianism'.     

Resources,Family Organization,and Domestic Violence Against Married Women in Minya,Egypt

I evaluate the influence of household wealth, women's socioeconomic dependence, status inconsistency, and family organization on physical abuse in the prior year and attitudes about wife abuse and divorce among 2,522 married women in Minya, Egypt. Household wealth is negatively associated with physical abuse. Women who are dependent on marriage because they have sons and less schooling than their husbands are more likely to have experienced physical abuse and to report marginally more tolerance for such abuse. Women who are isolated from natal or biological kin and living with marital relatives are more likely to have experienced physical abuse. Findings underscore the role of women's dependence and social isolation in enabling physical abuse among women of all economic classes.     

Socioeconomic resources,gender traditionalism,and wife abuse in urban Russian couples

Until recently, Soviet data restrictions led to limited knowledge about wife abuse in Russia. This study adds to emerging research on Russian domestic violence by testing hypotheses derived from resource theory on the effects on wife abuse of husband's absolute resources versus spouses’ relative resources. Analysis of data from the 1996 National Survey of Russian Marriages (N= 664) shows support only for the influence of husband's absolute socioeconomic resources (education, employment status, and occupational rank). As in U.S. studies, intergenerational patterns of wife abuse and husband's alcohol use have notable effects on wife abuse. The findings suggest that although resource theory may partly explain wife abuse in urban Russia, spouses’ relative resources and husband's gender traditionalism currently have little influence.     

Reproducing the Home in Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers

This paper examines a central concern in the texts of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (1914) and Sons and Lovers (1913)—the figure of the home and the mother within it. Situating the author's preoccupation with the domestic interior alongside contemporary social concerns about the houses of the working-classes and the nature of the familial relations that went on within them, I argue that the ways of seeing into the house in these texts are intimately related to the place of the embodied author. Tressell and Lawrence's habitation of the class structure—their lived relation to the places of class—determines their reproduction of the working-class home and accounts for the different ways in which it is used in each of the novels, as symbol of the body politic and site of psychological longings respectively.     

Fathering With Multiple Partners: Links to Children's Well‐Being in Early Childhood

The claim that multiple partner fertility may pose a risk of adverse outcomes for children has not been tested. We test this argument using a sample of 4,027 resident fathers and children from the Fragile Families and Child Well‐being Survey by examining the pathways through which fathers' multipartnered fertility is associated with children's externalizing behaviors and physical health status at 36 months. Path analyses indicate that multiple partner fertility exerted both a significant direct and indirect effect through paternal depression to influence children's externalizing behaviors. Fathers' multiple partner fertility also exerted a significant indirect effect through one mediator—father involvement—to influence children's physical health. This evidence suggests that the disruptions brought about by multipartnered fertility are important for understanding child well‐being.     

High Betrayal Adolescent Sexual Abuse and Nonsuicidal Self-Injury: The Role of Depersonalization in Emerging Adults

ABSTRACT

Adolescent sexual abuse can interfere with healthy development. Sexual abuse that is perpetrated by close other(s)—high betrayal—can be additionally harmful, with sexual abuse being linked with dissociation and nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI). Depersonalization, a dissociative subtype characterized by disconnection between oneself and one’s body and/or thoughts, may further explain the role of dissociation in NSSI. The purpose of the current study was to: 1) isolate the impact of adolescent sexual abuse on NSSI; and 2) examine depersonalization as a pathway between high betrayal adolescent sexual abuse and NSSI. Participants (N = 192) were college students who completed online measures assessing sexual abuse, dissociation, and NSSI. While controlling for child sexual abuse and adult sexual abuse, adolescent sexual abuse predicted NSSI. Moreover, there was an indirect effect of high betrayal adolescent sexual abuse on NSSI through depersonalization, while controlling for child sexual abuse, adult sexual abuse, and medium betrayal (perpetrator: unclose other) adolescent sexual abuse. Findings from the current study have implications for relational cultural therapy as an evidence-informed treatment that highlights the relational harm of interpersonal trauma, while incorporating contextual elements, such as development of maladaptive coping strategies, into therapy.     

Employment and the Risk of Domestic Abuse Among Low‐Income Women

This paper uses data from 2 randomized evaluations of welfare‐to‐work programs—the Minnesota Family Investment Program and the National Evaluation of Welfare‐to‐Work Strategies—to estimate the effect of employment on domestic abuse among low‐income single mothers. Unique to our analysis is the application of a 2‐stage least squares method, in which random assignment enables us to control for omitted characteristics that might otherwise confound the association between employment and domestic abuse. We find that increased maternal employment decreases subsequent reports of domestic abuse in both studies. In the Minnesota Family Investment Program—a program with an enhanced income disregard that allowed welfare mothers to keep a portion of their welfare income as earnings rose—an increase in household incomes appears to have contributed to reductions in reports of domestic abuse.     

Poetry of the Swamp: Blok’s “Folks” Cycle Bubbles of the Earth

Gogol'’s “A Few Words about Pushkin” has traditionally been viewed as evidence that Gogol' idolized Pushkin as a national poet par excellence. This article argues that behind Gogol'’s deference for Russia’s greatest poet lie layers of polemic and subversive iconoclasm. Though he initially proclaims Pushkin Russia’s national poet, Gogol' goes on to use his trademark rhetorical tools to effectively strip the poet of the honour. In doing so, he attempts to influence the reception of his own writings, which at the time predominantly concerned Ukrainian themes, in ways that would encourage his Russian audience to consider him—and not Pushkin—as Russia’s premier national writer. Countering Pushkin’s Russocentric model of national culture, Gogol' champions instead a centrifugal conception of national-imperial identity that places Russia’s imperial periphery at the center of the “Russian” experience.     

‘We Thought the World Was Makeable’: Scenario Planning and Postcolonial Fiction

Abstract

This essay uses Indra Sinha's 2007 novel, Animal's People, as a critical lens to analyse the discourse of scenario planning. I argue that scenario planning, a strategy of speculation about possible futures, elides history—specifically the intertwined processes of colonialism and capitalism—in favour of the idea of globalization as an inexorable unfolding of the world as a complex system. Following a brief genealogy of the discourse of scenario planning that highlights its Cold War origins, and ongoing function in imagining, and helping to secure, the future of global capitalism, I offer as counterpoint a postcolonial reading of Animal's People. A fictional exploration of the aftermath of the 1984 Union Carbide factory gas leak in Bhopal, India, the novel contests (thematically and formally) the hegemonic temporality of globalization that informs scenario planning and the model of risk management it inspires.     

The Bengal Connection: Transnationalising America in The Namesake and The Tree Bride

Abstract

A reading is presented of The Namesake and The Tree Bride as diasporic novels that transnationalise the host culture by inscribing the ethnicity and history of Bengal on to the cultural topography of America. This interpolation is contextualised both in terms of the 'Bengal connection' — the now occluded saga of Bengal's rich commercial and intellectual contacts with New England from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries — and the changing paradigms of immigrant socialisation from the melting pot to multiculturalism and beyond. The inference drawn is that the non-Eurocentric and non-Atlantic 'Bengal connection', which may be taken as emblematic of other such strands in American society, not only troubles monologic myths of 'Americanness', but simultaneously interrogates the sufficiency of the 'Atlantic' template as the marker of a multi-ethnic nation. A suggested alternative is Tagore's 'vernacular nationalism' that admits intrinsic otherness as integral to its conception of national identity.     

Management in/as Comic Relief: Queer Theory and Gender Performativity in The Office

Our discussion here focuses on gender performativity — the evocation of gender through stylized modes of interaction and the recitation of particular cultural norms — in the BBC comedy series The Office. We suggest that The Office can be read as a cultural text that brings sedimented ways of thinking about and enacting gender into relief, a technique that effectively ‘queers’ management and organization as gendered phenomena. In doing so, we argue that not only does The Office parody the ways in which management is configured according to the terms of what Judith Butler has described as the ‘heterosexual matrix’, but that it also represents a parodic critique of the gendered ways in which this configuration is enacted in everyday organizational encounters. We also suggest that, in addition to its capacity to be read as a parody of gender performativity, The Office reflects queer theory's concern, particularly as the latter has been articulated in Butler's writing, to reveal something of the pathos inherent in the desire for recognition that underpins the hegemonic performance of gender. In this respect, our reading of The Office emphasizes that, as a popular cultural text, it throws into (comic) relief the extent to which the desire for recognition underpins the organizational performance and management of gender in accordance with the terms of the heterosexual matrix.     

Women's self‐defense and sexual assault resistance: The state of the field

Public attention to sexual assault has increased dramatically over the last decade, spurring questions about how it can be prevented. One approach that has received scant attention is women's self‐defense training (sometimes known as sexual assault resistance training). This neglect is curious because empowerment‐based women's self‐defense (ESD) training is so far the only approach that has produced substantively significant decreases in victimization rates. In this article, I review the research evidence on women's self‐defense training. Does resisting a sexual assault affect the outcome of sexual violence? Does self‐defense training further reduce women's risk of violence? What are the other consequences of self‐defense training? How does self‐defense work for different groups of women—for example, those who have survived prior victimizations? Are the critiques of women's self‐defense training valid? Finally, what do we still need to learn about women's self‐defense? Overall, I argue that this evidence presents a compelling case that women's self‐defense training should be central to any efforts to prevent sexual violence.     

Battered Immigrant Mexican Women's Perspectives Regarding Abuse and Help-Seeking

SUMMARY

A qualitative, pilot study employing in-depth ethno-graphic interviews was conducted to examine perceptions and attitudes towards abuse and the help-seeking behaviors of a sample of ten battered immigrant Mexican women. Findings indicated that participants' attitudes about seeking help were influenced more by cultural factors (e.g., gender-role expectations, famialism) than by psycho-social stres-sors (e.g., immigrant status, financial dependency). Children's welfare played a salient role in women's decisions about seeking help, both as a deterrent and a motivating factor. Women's attitudes about their own abuse were more tolerant than their attitudes about hypothetical situations involving others. Changes in women's attitudes about abuse reflected changes only after some type of intervention had taken place. The majority of the women in the sample had misconceptions or were uninformed about shelters. Suggestions for further research and intervention with this population and a model of internal and external determinants of help-seeking behavior are presented.     

Narrative Manhood Acts: Batterer Intervention Program Graduates' Tragic Relationships

We analyze how twenty graduates of a Batterer Intervention Program constructed autobiographical stories about their relationships with women they assaulted. We focus on the presentation of gendered selves via narrative manhood acts, which we define as self‐narratives that signify membership in the category “man” and the possession of a masculine self. We also show how graduates constructed self‐narratives as a genre that was oppositional to organizational narratives: rather than adopting the program's domestic violence melodrama or preferred conversion narrative, graduates used the larger culture—especially “bitch” imagery and sometimes racialized discourse—to construct tragedies. Our study demonstrates the usefulness of narrative analysis for research on batterers' accounts and manhood acts, and also shows how oppositional genre‐making can be a method to resist organizational narratives.     

Of Race/Religion,Nation and Violence: Incident at Vichy and Final Solutions

Abstract

Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy (1964) and Indian English playwright Mahesh Dattani's Final Solutions (1992) invite comparison in that they each deal with a historic moment that demonstrates contextually how violence can be common to racism, (organized) religion, and national imagining. While Miller's play externalizes human cruelty by locating it in the Nazi experience, Dattani's — centred around the recent Hindutva movement in India — clearly evokes the image of the Holocaust, without equating it with Nazism, though. Yet similarities between the plays abound — suspect secularity of the nation-state, insecurities around one's racial/ethnic/religious identity, denial of responsibility, and the eventual need for human communication. The endings of both plays posit a certain notion of justice, but without clarifying whether it can be realized through 'the true humanly valuable concepts' of decency and love or whether it functions more as 'a claim made by the oppressed'. This tone of self-criticality underscores the persistent need for restraint in the exercise of power.