Twelve accounts from sexual assault survivors.

By blending personal memoir and critical analysis, Voices of the Survivors explores cultural and human responses to the violence of political repression and social disintegration perpetrated in Argentina during the so called Dirty War of the late '70s and early '80s. Central to the theoretical and critical corpus is the work of scholars writing in response to the historical trauma of the Holocaust (Adorno, La Capra, Shoshana Felman), which posed questions regarding social trauma, the links between mourning and memory, and the role of artistic creation and its value as testimony. The book traces shifts in discursive formations and social practices critical to understanding the origin and impact of the Process of National Reorganization (as it was known by the military government) through analysis of a broad range of sources, including poetry, fiction, memoirs and testimonies, popular music, and journalism. These texts explore the persistence of issues of memory and mourning within the particular conditions of Argentine culture in the aftermath of the dictatorship. This significant new work will be essential reading for scholars interested in issues of violence, political and cultural disruption, memory, and historical consciousness.

In 1997, more than 3.2 million abused children were reported to protective service agencies. In these pages are the intimate voices are the survivors of the anguish of domestic violence and sexual abuse in the home -- the place that should be a haven of safety.

A systematic study of testimony rooted in contemporary continental philosophy and drawing on literary case studies. From analytic epistemology to gender theory, testimony is a major topic in philosophy today. Yet, one distinctive approach to testimony has not been fully appreciated: the recent history of contemporary continental philosophy offers a rich source for another approach to testimony. In this book, Gert-Jan van der Heiden argues that a continental philosophy of testimony can be developed that is guided by those forms of bearing witness that attest to limit experiences of human existence, in which the human is rendered mute, speechless, or robbed of a common understanding. In the first part, Van der Heiden explores this sense of testimony in a reading of several literary texts, ranging from Plato’s literary inventions to those of Kierkegaard, Melville, Soucy, and Mortier. In the second part, based on the orientation offered by the literary experiments, Van der Heiden offers a more systematic account of testimony in which he distinguishes and analyzes four basic elements of testimony. In the third part, he shows what this analysis implies for the question of the truth and the truthfulness of testimony. In his discussion with philosophers such as Heidegger, Derrida, Lyotard, Agamben, Foucault, Ricoeur, and Badiou, Van der Heiden also provides an overview of how the problem of testimony emerges in a number of thinkers pivotal to twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought. “The Voice of Misery is a special book. Van der Heiden has presented an argument that is poised to challenge discourse in analytic philosophy, reshape approaches in continental philosophy, and give new orientation to interdisciplinary research in continental philosophy and literary theory. The book will find a large readership across the discipline of philosophy and in several areas of the humanities.” — Theodore George, author of Tragedies of Spirit: Tracing Finitude in Hegel’s Phenomenology

Slavery is not a crime confined to the far reaches of history. It is an injustice that continues to entrap twenty-seven million people across the globe. Laura Murphy offers close to forty survivor narratives from Cambodia, Ghana, Lebanon, Macedonia, Mexico, Russia, Thailand, Ukraine, and the United States, detailing the horrors of a system that forces people to work without pay and against their will, under the threat of violence, with little or no means of escape. Representing a variety of circumstances in diverse contexts, these survivors are the Frederick Douglasses, Sojourner Truths, and Olaudah Equianos of our time, testifying to the widespread existence of a human rights tragedy and the urgent need to address it. Through storytelling and firsthand testimony, this anthology shapes a twenty-first-century narrative that many believe died with the end of slavery in the Americas. Organized around such issues as the need for work, the punishment of defiance, and the move toward activism, the collection isolates the causes, mechanisms, and responses to slavery that allow the phenomenon to endure. Enhancing scholarship in women's studies, sociology, criminology, law, social work, and literary studies, the text establishes a common trajectory of vulnerability, enslavement, captivity, escape, and recovery, creating an invaluable resource for activists, scholars, legislators, and service providers.

At the age of four, Dr. Lise Deguire suffered third-degree burns over 65% of her body. In this memoir, she tells her story as a burn survivor and growing up in her dysfunctional family. Despite the seriousness of the subject, the tone of the book is positive, humorous, and inspiring.

Its years later in her life. She thought, felt, and believed she had gotten over and had gotten past wanting to be a daddys girl, but she kept remembering and reliving how something in her daddy-daughter relationship was needed, yet wasnt there, didnt show up, and never did happen, or was taken away, preventing her from having the daddy-daughter relationship she so desired.