Feeling the fleshed body: The aftermath of childhood rape
Document Type
Book
Faculty
Faculty of Health, Engineering and Science
School
School of Psychology and Social Science
Abstract
In 1971, on two separate occasions, Brenda Downing was raped. She was in her final year of primary school. In the immediate aftermath, the shame she harboured, coupled with a failed disclosure the same year, meant she did not risk talking of her experience again until almost thirty years later and did not begin to address the trauma, held frozen in her body, for a further ten years. In this book, she not only explores her long-term somatic response to the trauma of rape, but also examines the bodily responses of nine other women raped in childhood. Using a combination of somatic inquiry, writing and performance-making, her pioneering reflexive and embodied methodology reveals the raped body as agentic and subversive, with the capacity to express trauma through symptoms not always readily recognized or understood. Her findings have significant implications for the care and treatment of rape victims, for further research into the multiple impacts of sexual trauma, and for materialist knowledge-making practices.
DOI
10.3726/978-3-0353-0786-3
Access Rights
subscription content
Comments
Downing, B. (2016). Feeling the Fleshed Body. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang UK. Book details Available from from https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/47144