Sexual Violence in the Dark Room: Reading Whisper Networks as Collective Narratives

• María Isabel Marqués López ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad Complutense de Madrid
• Localización: Moving beyond the pandemic: English and American studies in Spain / coord. por Francisco Gallardo del Puerto, María del Carmen Camus Camus, Jesús Ángel González López, 2022, ISBN 978-84-19024-15-2, págs. 201-206
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Libro (pdf)
• Resumen

  • This paper aims to analyze the phenomenon of whisper networks, looking at their contested development in public culture after the MeToo movement. Often intended to elude the "due process" that may involve for survivors to endure the stigma of doubt and blaming, whisper networks have also been questioned on account of their restricted access and their practical limitations. Yet beyond their paralegal status, they can constitute testimonial spaces that mobilize a number of feelings within a feminist agenda, thus fostering solidarity against the violence inflicted by people and institutions. Taking the cases of the Shitty Media Men list in the United States and LoSHA in India, I argue that the logic and the private circulation of whisper networks can potentially open an ethical space for survivors to reckon with the intimate experience of sexual violence, renegotiating the value of political action from an emphasis on emotion and bodily vulnerability.