Hypatia: Volume 11 - | Cambridge Core

The Voice on the Skin: Self-Mutilation and Merleau-Ponty's Theory of Language
Janice McLane
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

11 March 2020, pp. 107-118
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Self-mutilation is generally seen only as a negative response to trauma. But when trauma cannot be expressed, other forms of communication become necessary. As gestural communication, self-mutilation can reorganize and stabilize the trauma victim's world, providing a “voice on the skin” when the actual voice is forbidden. This is a plausible extension of Merleau-Ponty's gestural theory of language, and an interesting comment on his notion of “reversibility” as essential to linguistic communication.

Intersecting Memories: Bearing Witness to the 1989 Massacre of Women in Montreal
Sharon Rosenberg
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11 March 2020, pp. 119-129
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In this essay, I write memory across the public-private divide as a commemorative response to the Massacre of Women at École Polytechnique. Through five layers of remembering, I explore the creation of an analytic space that simultaneously considers traumatized subjectivity, bearing witness, and feminist pedagogy.

Questions of Identity and Inheritance: A Critical Review of Kwame Anthony Appiah's In My Father's House
Nkiru Nzegwu
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25 March 2020, pp. 175-201
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Judeo-Christian and Anglo-Saxon forms of marriage have injected patrilineal values and companionate expectations into the Akan matrilineal family structure. As Anthony Appiah demonstrates, these infusions have generated severe strains in the matrikin social structures and, in extreme cases, resulted in the break up of families. In this essay, I investigate the ideological politics at play in this patrilinealization of Asante society.

Double Binds: Latin American Women's Prison Memories
Mary Jane Treacy
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

11 March 2020, pp. 130-145
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Scant attention given to gender in Latin American prison experiences implies that men and women suffer similarly and react according to their shared beliefs. This essay explores the prison memoirs of four Latin American women. Each account uses a standardized prison narrative adjusted to suit the narrator's own purpose and hints at how sexuality and motherhood, which shape women's experiences in prison, have been removed from sight.

Hypatia