Traumatic Possessions: The Body and Memory in African American Women's Writing and Performance

Chapter 2. Betrayal Trauma and the Test of Complicity in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus

2 / Betrayal Trauma and the Test of Complicity in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus A U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services campaign pamphlet, “Look beneath the Surface,” asks health-care providers, “Can you recognize victims of human trafficking among the people you help every day?”1 The pamphlet then states, “Most victims do not see themselves as victims and do not realize what is being done to them is wrong,” a statement that raises complex issues around victim readability and selfawareness . What does it mean to “recognize victims” who “do not see themselves as victims”? As discussed in the preceding chapter, the white writer in Dessa Rose, Nehemiah, refuses to recognize Dessa as a victim of horrendous violence because his beliefs about her black body shape his ability to witness the evidence of her trauma. Throughout the novel, Dessa also finds herself unrecognizable in memory around her trauma and the scars that mark her. Like Dessa’s initial reluctance to disclose her inner suffering, the DHHS pamphlet refers to trafficked individuals’ hesitance to disclose completely upon initial questioning that they are living under conditions that repeatedly traumatize them. They may in fact report the details of their experience, as Dessa does in her flat speech within the jailhouse, but even with this reporting, they do not “see themselves ” or “realize what is being done to them is wrong” for reasons not fully explored in the pamphlet. The pamphlet offers strategies for the health-care worker to read “beneath the surface” presentation—the body—of the possible trafficked woman. In spite of the transparency of the victim’s situation in relation betrayal trauma and the test of complicity / 35 to the “clues” described in the pamphlet, she may not be able to read her own situation; she may not recognize herself within the trafficking script. In Dessa Rose, Dessa is only able to bear witness to her own suffering after she leaves the hostile environment of the jailhouse, and similar inhibitions may exist for trafficked women. The pamphlet seems to recommend that care providers disregard the victim’s voice here. If the trafficked individual has been questioned about her conditions, and she fails to acknowledge explicitly that she suffers from possible abuse and exploitation, then one can and, the pamphlet implies, should ignore her words. As troubling as this action may seem, it suggests a possible understanding of the complex psychic response to captivity-related, chronic trauma that would alter the victim’s self-perception and the possibilities for communicating this sense of experience to others. In “Law at a Crossroads: The Construction of Migrant Women Trafficked into Prostitution,” Nora V. Demleitner identifies another compelling aspect involved in recognizing victims within contemporary trafficking discourse: the spectacle of the violation determines the public response to the victim. As Demleitner puts it, “Much of the reluctance to help trafficked women effectively can be ascribed to the social ambivalence that surrounds their construction as prostitutes and as undocumented migrants.”2 Their marginalized status necessitates graphic displays to overcome the stereotyping: “Only powerful images, such as the forced prostitution of very young girls or brutal forms of physical abuse amounting to torture, have succeeded in overcoming the negative attitude toward prostitutes and ‘illegal’ immigrants, which is reflected in the reluctant passage and enforcement of antitrafficking laws.”3 As Demleitner suggests, images must meet specific criteria before they elicit an empathetic response within the public imagination. While the public polices the spectacle of the victim’s body, the perpetrators remain largely invisible. The New Statesman writer Joan Smith argues that “what is becoming clear is that men who use brothels, massage parlours and street prostitutes are the missing link, invisible in most discussions of sex trade.”4 Within contemporary trafficking discourse, the rhetorical burden remains on the individual whose body supplies the services. Suzan-Lori Parks’s play Venus addresses the questions about selfawareness , choice, and complicity raised by scholarly and creative responses to human trafficking through her resurrection of Sara Baartman, a.k.a. the Hottentot Venus, who arrived in England from South Africa in 36 / traumatic possessions 1810. Displayed in London’s Piccadilly, Baartman drew crowds interested in having a peak or a poke at her buttocks, which well exceeded European norms. The show caused public stir, with some Londoners accusing her of public indecency and others accusing the showman Cezar of holding Baartman against her will. Venus fits well...