In an informal talk Wednesday, Charlotte Pierce-Baker, associate research professor of women's studies and author of Surviving the Silence: Black Women's Stories of Rape, stressed the importance of a "theory of the flesh" when dealing with victims of sexual assault.
As part of the "Wednesday Conversations" series by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Pierce-Baker spoke only briefly before opening the floor to questions from the audience. Among the diverse topics of discussion were Pierce-Baker's book, the pedagogy of trauma and counseling techniques for friends of trauma survivors.
"I thought it went brilliantly," Pierce-Baker said. "We had a wonderful cross-section of male and female, professors and students, people from the Duke community and people from the Durham community, black and white. I couldn't have asked for more."
A "theory of the flesh" is a theory that goes beyond the traditional means of analyzing sexual assault by recognizing the importance of factors such as race, gender, class and sexuality, Pierce-Baker said, borrowing the term from Latina feminist theorists Gloria Anzaldua and Cherie Moraga.
"We're not all alike, we're not all cut from one pattern. Body, flesh and the essential nature of black women's bodies are important in my discussion of violence today," she said. "You minimize the effect emotionally and psychologically when you don't pay attention to the flesh."
Pierce-Baker said she became especially cognizant of matters of the flesh after her close friend and confidante died unexpectedly.
"I witnessed a loss and a leaving, as have some of you, but I was not paying attention so I missed important elements of that leaving," Pierce-Baker said. She added that this marked a turning point in how she viewed the world, as she realized she had missed her friend's bodily signals of dying.
"I have to pay attention to the body, to the flesh," she said. "A disembodied theory does not work for me."
When one audience member asked about the emerging pedagogy of trauma at the University, Pierce-Baker emphasized the need for an integrated and personal theory.
"In recent years, theory has been defined by some as disembodied, impersonal and beyond the perceptible conversational moments," Pierce-Baker said. "A 'theory of the flesh' is really important as well as traditional theory when we're writing and when we're teaching and when we're passing on to our students how to write and how to do research."
The first step, however, is "making the invisible visible--or getting rape victims to talk about their traumas, Pierce-Baker said. "Women are susceptible to take the blame [for their rapes].... If strong is what you're supposed to be, then once you're raped, you're weak because you weren't supposed to let that happen anyways."
There were few empty seats at Wednesday's conversation, and audience members said they were very pleased with what had been discussed.
"I was interested in transgressions against women, and how they differed between black and white women," said senior Kashmir Hill. "I wasn't really expecting the conversation to be looking at the body rather than the mind, but I think this way it was more universal, or more applicable to women as a whole."
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