Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence, and Resistance Ethics

6. Identifying Resistance

Identifying Resistance The previous chapters have retraced some of the traumatic consequences of violence against women by amplifying their vantage point, and sorting through the social constructions that reproduce their trauma. However, this depiction of the relentless, crushing, and variegated pressures of domination on women would be highly inaccurate without attention to the quality of resistance that also occurs. In addition , such an omission would contradict my theo-ethical assumption of the presence of powerful divine resources available to us for resisting the forms of dehumanization leveled at black women. Healing and resistance are key ingredients in the process of countering male violence against women. However, there are dramatic differences in their respective properties, how each may be accessed by victim-survivors , and how they are manifested in the broader society. Healing is a regenerative process that repairs the damage of violence. It takes place when the emotional costs to women and the spiritual bonds that have been ravaged by violence are restored and renewed. Healing implies liberation from social labels and structures of power that assure revictimization and repeated wounding of women. Healing within society would entail the elimination of all social instigators of intimate violence. Unfortunately , the extensive moral harm that the violence constitutes is seldom communally redressed in a manner that brings about authentic healing in society. Likewise, the women who survive intimate assault seldom achieve the fully restored and renewed state of well-being that healing promises. But women do engage in resistance. Unlike healing, resistance involves any sign of dissent with the consuming effects of intimate and social violence. When a woman survives, she accomplishes resistance. It occurs when a community leader publicly contests through words and actions the male-centered notions of power, authority, and status that can appear to authorize violence against women. How is this resistance related to healing? Though hardly a guar6 151 antor of healing, acts of resistance can open up possibilities for a degree of healing to take place. These acts of resistance create the conditions for women to take steps toward their own renewed spiritual vitality, and for the local communities where the violence has taken place to begin to restore the trust that has been broken. Yet, since the intimate and social violence against black women is comprised not only of particular incidents of assault but also of ongoing systemic violations, the rectifying work of healing is perpetually unfinished. Healing is a frustrating, unreachable goal under the present conditions of our white supremacist, male-centered society. Only acts of resistance can challenge the virulent strains of violence that are visited upon AfricanAmerican women. And when communally carried out with a persistent and comprehensive approach that matches the violence, resistance bears the potential for igniting a broad-based transformation of cultural values and practices. Challenging the varied combinations of oppressive realities that contribute to the trauma of black women victim-survivors of male violence involves a fierce struggle. Of course, this struggle is already being waged. To analyze it meaningfully we need to attend to both method and practice . In this chapter, consideration will be given to a method for conceptualizing the struggle to resist, as well as the concrete practices that have been and ought to be a part of it. While both broad-based communal and individual women’s resistance are undeniably bound together in the struggle to stem the violence, this chapter will focus on the identification of individual women’s resistance. The Concept of Resistance The first and most basic issue that requires attention when conceiving of a method of resistance to the trauma of intimate violence, is to define resistance behavior as being within the realm of possibility for victim-survivors . We need to break through ideological biases that impede us from considering even the potential for oppositional behavior by women. Certain racialized filters for interpreting behavior can obscure black women’s acts of resistance. Similarly, conceiving of women as “victims” in an overly determining manner can hinder our appreciation of their helpseeking efforts. 152 | Identifying Resistance Rejecting an Approach That Overstates the Impact of Oppression Overgeneralization about how societal oppression functions can sometimes create formidable barriers to recognizing and understanding resistance. Too unrelenting a focus on the destructive impact of race and gender subjugation upon black women victim-survivors helps build such a barrier. Alexander Thomas and Samuel Sillen, psychiatrists and scholars of the history of psychiatry, point out the...