As many of you have addressed in your blog entries already, Angela Davis unsettles the way feminists have approached sexual assault. Despite the major feminist contribution to sexual assault activism being law reform Davis questions the state’s involvement when it comes to intervening in violence against women. According to Davis, the prison industrial complex only reiterates the structural and hegemonic violence. This leads us to the question asked in class: what would it mean to take prison abolition seriously when thinking about sexual assault?
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Following Davis’ Democracy Now interview, we’ve discussed education and re-education as a potential alternative (or preventative) to incarceration. This is a valuable intervention, but it doesn’t immediately abolish the prison system. Following Emily’s blog post I was wondering about other feminist ‘alternatives to police’ we might advocate for. Inspired by the film Born in Flames, I thought the best alternative into sexual assault might actually be a vigilante collective response--literally bashing back.
What if communities held individuals accountable through violence? If the survivor felt it was appropriate a collective, violent response to their perpetrator was enacted.
Davis argues that the prison industrial complex is a product of violent structures, and should be abolished because of its perpetuation of violence. But what if there was a violence outside of this structure? What if violence against perps was radically not sexist, racist, transphobic, and heterosexist? I’d like to believe that bashing-back violence could be removed from an inherently oppressive structural violence, and instead is a revolutionary violence--retribution of the oppressed.
Our CSL project aims to prevent perpetrators by advocating for consent. While I am excited about our project, it is limited by advocating for consent at the level of the individual. What if our CSL project advocated for bashing back, collective accountability and responsive violence instead of consent between two individuals? It would be radical and would paint feminists as aggressive. But maybe it would also breathe life into the powerful victim figure that Mardorossian suggested we return to--a power that comes from collective response.
These are my twisted desires for community response. I leave you now with this 10 second tune from every Albertan feminist's fav radical band, Rape Revenge.
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ReplyDeleteDear Brett,
ReplyDeleteI found this piece of your blog post to be particularly intriguing: “what if communities held individuals accountable through violence? If the survivor felt it was appropriate a collective, violent response to their perpetrator could be enacted.”
In regard to our CSL placement, I, too, found our poster campaign to be targeting a rather individual endeavor. The responsibility is placed on the individual to consent. Like you, I think it would be interesting to remove the limiting individual aspect. However, when it comes to bashing-back, I sort of feel hesitant. Although it does seem particularly intriguing, I can’t help but think that the very act of violence in itself is linked to the history of slavery and colonialism. Would it not be counter intuitive to perpetuate violence as a form of accountability?
In the democracy now video, Angela Davis, very compellingly, argues for reeducation as an alternative to incarceration. She offers this alternative because she is implying that the legacy of slavery (and we can also connect this to colonialism) is alive and well in contemporary Western society, albeit it in a new and “seemingly” (*seemingly* to the privileged) insidious way. Abolition, in other words, did not end slavery: the prison system functions as a new form of its legacy.
Here it is interesting to think about how the structures of race and class function in the narrative slavery and colonialism. If we were to argue for bashing back, then would we not be perpetuating a class-based response? What class and race can bash-back without facing violent ramifications? What class and race does the law serve? The law is a state apparatus that maintains the order as it currently is. I can’t help but think about the American civil rights protests in the 60s and 70s and how violently people of colour were treated by police. This can be extended to other protests, like stonewall. Violence is not revolutionary - there is nothing new about it when you exist in a white hegemonic state. Violence is mundane, in a sense, to those who live in a state of violence everyday.
I argue, like Davis, that we need to change the grid of violence, and change the structure that maintains this grid.
Thank you for provoking me to think more critically about forms of collective resistance,
*My apologies for all of the deletes*
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