Session 10: Pain and Resistance
1st Global Conference
Wednesday 17th February – Friday 19th February 2010
The Women’s College, Sydney, Australia
in association with the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney
The Caribbean Slave Woman: Resistance as a Form of Preservation
Nadia Salter
University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)
The woman that I am today, can only be attributed to the women they were. Who are these women I speak of? The ones who survived the middle passage, to tell stories of the past and carry on traditions for the future. The ones forced to work relentlessly in the hot Caribbean sun, providing their capturers with the means to obtain lavish wealth. The ones who kept all their hopes and dreams in the pit of their stomachs, envisioning the day that they or their descendants would be free. The ones I speak of are my ancestors, the Caribbean Slave Women.
Caribbean Slave Woman has been viewed as a victim from a historical context to some. However, she represents something much more phenomenal than we can imagine.
For many, when they think of a slave, they perceive someone who has relinquished all of their power into the control of their capturers. For the Caribbean Slave Woman, this was not the case. She was exploited economically, sexually and even forced to disregard her indigenous spirituality. Considering the conditions of severe oppression she was exposed to, the Caribbean Slave Woman was still able to construct various forms of resistance. It is important for us to deconstruct the experiences of the Caribbean Slave Woman, recognizing and celebrating her strength and perseverance.
This paper’s will focus on the Caribbean Slave Woman and the use of “Resistance” as a form of preservation of self, spirit and community. Three themes that will be explored to describe “Resistance” are Sexuality, Religion and Revolution. The importance of “Resistance” as a form of preservation, while dealing with pain will be demonstrated throughout this paper.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
The Audiences of Pain: The Indonesian Audiences’ Response to Human Rights
Kurniawan Adi Saputro
Indonesian Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta, Indonesia
This paper will present an examination of the Indonesian audiences’ reception of the depiction of pain in two human rights documentaries. The documentaries are: Operation Fine Girl (about rape used as war weapon in Sierra Leone) and Listen to Our Voice (presents testimonies of torture victims in Papua, Indonesia). The visual and verbal depictions of bodily pain that are almost always found in human rights documentaries function to urge the world audiences that humanity itself is at risk. However, the presumed universality of human rights does not easily translate into actions, especially when it crosses the national borders. I will argue in the paper that in the process of reception, Indonesian audiences used discursive resources, such as elements of narrative and mass media’s discourse, to position themselves before the victims and in front of the other audiences. In positioning themselves, the audiences forged an imagined commonality and difference between themselves and the victims, and, also, among themselves.
The use of subjective perspective in showing the pain of Sierra Leonean rape victims was received almost viscerally by female audiences, in contrast with their detached comments to the formal-verbal testimonies of torture victims from Indonesia. Furthermore, the audiences forge solidarity with rape victims based on their gender, whereas with torture victims they build solidarity based on their citizenship. Drawing their knowledge from media, the audiences reproduced paternalistic relationship with inferior Papuans, whereas they pitied the Sierra Leonean women’s unfortunate lives as equal human for lack of knowledge of them. Knowledge of the victim’s life, then, shaped how the Indonesian audiences felt their sympathy toward the victims.
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