Damaged Goods

Victimhood-Survivorship and the Social Marking of Identity

Bibliographic Data

ID2049841
AuthorsGabrielle Lafleur (0000-0002-1944-3798, Rutgers University New Brunswick NJ USA, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume47
Issue2
Pages226-252
Publication date2024-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSymbolic Interaction (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0195-6086 • E-ISSN: 1533-8665
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/symb.699
OpenAlexW4396799081
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited59

This article offers a cultural cognitive theory of sexual violence: a Zerubavelian reading of its classificatory, attentional, perceptual, semiotic, mnemonic, and temporal dimensions. It maps the asymmetric syntactic contrasts between the cultural trifecta of 'Victim-Survivors,' 'Victimizers,' and the hitherto unnamed, taken-for-granted 'Unvictims,' arguing that those who experience sexual violence are marked in contrast to both those who victimize and those who have never been victimized. Suggesting that one need not be the actor of a marked act to be marked by it, a victimizing person's marked act crystallizes as a marked identity for the person they victimize, a process I call 'semiotic ricochet.' Extending critiques of the victimhood-survivorship frame, this article argues that the 'rigid-minded,' binary classificatory scheme of 'Victim' or 'Survivor' reifies, universalizes, derivatizes, and temporally displaces its attributed. It proposes hyphenating, encasing in scare quotes, and capitalizing the identity category of 'Victim-Survivor,' as well as referring to individuals as 'those who experience sexual violence.' Using the Zerubavelian theoretico-methodological practice of 'concept-driven' sociology, it identifies the 'Victim-Survivor' as merely one specific instantiation of the generic social type the 'Damaged Good,' alongside other identities derived from marked non-acts such as placement in foster care or undergoing a mastectomy for breast cancer

Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive psychology · Epistemology · Identity (music · Mnemonic · Psychoanalysis · Semiotics · Sociology · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Law in Society and Culture · Psychology · Sexual Assault and Victimization Studies · Social Psychology

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