Subjectification and Confession in Contemporary Memoirs of Abduction and Prolonged Captivity

A striking trend is emerging in the Canadian and American literary landscape, and memoirs with the following narrative trajectory are now widely read: a stranger abducts a young woman, and holds her captive for years. She endures sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, eventually escapes, and returns...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Hypatia 2017-10, Vol.32 (4), p.833-848
Main Author: HILLSBURG, HEATHER A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autobiographical literature
Autobiographies
Confession
Economic factors
Emotional abuse
Victims
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Summary:A striking trend is emerging in the Canadian and American literary landscape, and memoirs with the following narrative trajectory are now widely read: a stranger abducts a young woman, and holds her captive for years. She endures sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, eventually escapes, and returns to her former life. The sole scholarly discussion about these memoirs frames them as empowering for the authors, but the social and economic factors that inform these texts remain unaddressed. Drawing from Michel Foucault's discussion of the confession, this article complicates and extends this analysis. First, it situates memoirs by Elizabeth Smart, Amanda Berry and Gena DeJesus, Jaycee Dugard, Michelle Knight, and Josefina Rivera as examples of the Foucauldian sexual confession. It then maps the ways memoirs enable the authors to voice their understanding of the social and economic factors that both gave rise to their plight and inform media discussions that blame them for their suffering. I will ultimately argue that memoirs function as a public venue to resist or reject dominant interpretive frames that shape a survivor's experiences, while simultaneously reaf-firming the ubiquity of these lines of thinking.
ISSN:0887-5367
1527-2001
DOI:10.1111/hypa.12359