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

这个项目的重点是纪念性暴力，女权主义者称之为跨越战争与和平的“暴力连续体”。它是跨学科的，从批判性的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中汲取见解。它始于这样一种假设：纪念活动从来不是一种政治中立的行为。相反，记忆的政治是重要的，有争议的，潜在的变革性的，对于理解当代女权主义斗争是必要的。在许多情况下，纪念有助于加强（性别和种族化）的现状。然而，它也可以提供一个机会来颠覆主导思想。在这个大背景下，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。我将重点关注六座纪念碑：三座献给美国和平时期的性暴力，三座献给亚太战争中的“慰安妇”。这项研究对知识有许多贡献。首先，它将产生深入的、定性的数据，重点是了解纪念碑本身。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而获得的采访数据；对纪念碑外观的深入、厚重的描述；以及照片形式的视觉数据。此外，该项目还将对报纸上关于纪念馆的文章进行系统的分析，让我了解媒体是如何描绘纪念馆的。综合起来，这些数据将描绘出不同纪念碑讲述的关于暴力的故事；它们形成的斗争和过程；以及他们对公众辩论的介入。这将创建有关纪念项目本身的详细知识。其次，该项目将重点放在与战争与和平时期的性暴力有关的纪念碑上，这使得它能够通过开展关于性别、暴力和（国家）认同的思想如何影响人们对不同形式的性暴力的理解的学术辩论，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性暴力。此外，该项目还将促进我们对纪念活动如何被想要结束战争与和平时期性暴力的活动人士用作有效工具的理解。我将与参与每个纪念项目的活动人士一起开发一个“活动人士工具包”，旨在帮助潜在的纪念活动人士思考他们的想法，并将他们的计划变为现实。最后，一个项目博客将通过更广泛地考虑性暴力的公众记忆的产生，为纪念的背景化提供空间。通过探索回忆录、诗歌和电视等文化产品，博客将提供丰富的开放式讨论和创造性思考空间，探讨如何建构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、雕像等思考性暴力，如何帮助我们以不同的方式思考性暴力是什么，以及如何有效地解决这一问题。

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.