The 'Comfort Women' and the Silence Breakers: Memorialising Sexual Violence as Feminist Politics

“慰安妇”和打破沉默的人：将性暴力铭记为女权主义政治

• 批准号: ES/V003321/1
• 负责人: Harriet Gray
• 金额: $ 30.96万
• 依托单位: University of York
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FV003321%2F1
• 关键词: Comfort; Women; Silence; Breakers; Memorialising

This project focuses on the memorialisation of sexual violence across what feminists have termed the 'continuum of violence' spanning war and peace. It is interdisciplinary, drawing on insights from critical International Relations as well as political theory, sociology, social movement studies, gender studies, and art studies. It begins from the assumption that memorialisation is never a politically neutral act. Rather, the politics of memory are important, contested, potentially transformative, and imperative to understanding contemporary feminist struggles. In many cases, memorialisation serves to reinforce the (gendered and racialised) status quo. However, it can also present an opportunity to disrupt dominant ideas. Against this broad backdrop, I analyse a cluster of sexual violence memorialisation projects that have appeared in the last decade across the USA. I focus on six memorials: three dedicated to peacetime sexual violence in the US, and three to the 'comfort women' of the Asia-Pacific War. The study makes a number of contributions to knowledge. First, it will produce in-depth, qualitative data focused on understanding the memorials themselves. This will include interview data created through interviews with activists, designers, and others involved in the establishment of the memorials; in-depth, thick descriptions of how the memorials look; and visual data in the form of photographs. In addition, the project will also conduct a systematic analysis of newspaper articles about the memorials, allowing me to understand how they have been portrayed in the media. Taken together, these data will chart the stories that the different memorials tell about violence; the struggles and processes through which they came into being; and their interventions into public debates. This will create detailed knowledge about the memorial projects themselves. Second, the focus of the project on memorials concerned with sexual violence in both war and peace allows it to make a theoretical contribution by developing academic debates on how ideas about gender, violence, and (national) identity shape the ways in which different forms of sexual violence are understood. This is important because how sexual violence is understood shapes how it is responded to.In addition, the project will also advance our understanding of how memorialisation can be used as an effective tool by activists wanting to end sexual violence in both war and peace. Together with activists involved in each of the memorialisation projects, I will develop an 'activist toolkit' that aims to help would-be memorial activists to think through their ideas and turn their plans into a reality. Finally, a project blog will provide space for a contextualisation of the memorials through a broader consideration of the production of public memory of sexual violence. By exploring cultural products including memoirs, poetry, and TV representations, the blog will provide space for rich open-ended discussions and creative thinking about how public memory of sexual violence is constructed. This will enable further reflection on how thinking about sexual violence through art, poetry, statues, and so on can help us to think differently about what sexual violence is and how it could be effectively tackled.

这个项目专注于纪念跨越战争与和平的性暴力，女权主义者将其称为“暴力的连续体”。它是跨学科的，借鉴了批判性国际关系以及政治理论、社会学、社会运动研究、性别研究和艺术研究的见解。它始于这样一种假设，即纪念永远不是一种政治中立的行为。相反，记忆的政治对于理解当代女权主义斗争是重要的、有争议的、潜在的变革性和势在必行的。在许多情况下，纪念活动有助于强化(性别和种族主义)现状。然而，它也可能提供一个颠覆主导思想的机会。在这样的大背景下，我分析了过去十年在美国各地出现的一系列性暴力纪念项目。我关注六座纪念馆：三座纪念美国和平时期的性暴力，三座纪念亚太战争中的“慰安妇”。这项研究对知识做出了许多贡献。首先，它将产生深入的、定性的数据，重点是了解纪念馆本身。这将包括通过采访活动家、设计师和其他参与建立纪念馆的人创建的采访数据；对纪念馆外观的深入而深入的描述；以及照片形式的视觉数据。此外，该项目还将对报纸上有关纪念馆的文章进行系统的分析，让我了解媒体是如何描绘它们的。综合起来，这些数据将绘制出不同纪念馆讲述的关于暴力的故事；它们产生的斗争和过程；以及它们对公共辩论的干预。这将创造关于纪念项目本身的详细知识。其次，该项目的重点是关于战争与和平中的性暴力的纪念碑，这使得它能够通过发展关于性别、暴力和(国家)认同的思想如何塑造不同形式的性暴力的理解方式的学术辩论，做出理论贡献。这一点很重要，因为如何理解性暴力决定了如何应对它。此外，该项目还将增进我们对纪念碑如何被活动人士用作有效工具的理解，这些活动家希望结束战争与和平中的性暴力。我将与参与每个纪念项目的积极分子一起，开发一个旨在帮助可能成为纪念者的积极分子思考他们的想法并将他们的计划变成现实的“积极分子工具包”。最后，一个博客项目将通过更广泛地考虑公众对性暴力的记忆，为纪念馆的背景介绍提供空间。通过探索回忆录、诗歌和电视表现形式等文化产品，该博客将提供丰富的开放式讨论和创造性思维的空间，以构建公众对性暴力的记忆。这将使我们能够进一步思考，通过艺术、诗歌、雕像等来思考性暴力如何能够帮助我们以不同的方式思考什么是性暴力以及如何有效地解决它。