2. Empathetic listening and epistemic injustice

In her book Aftermath: Violence and the remaking of a self (2002) Susan Brison explores some of the philosophical dimensions of trauma in response to her experience of sexual violence. We will look to two of Brison's central claims: (1) sexual violence can “undo” the self and (2) that the self can be “remade” through the retelling of traumatic experiences to empathetic listeners.Footnote ¹

Brison demonstrates how conceptions of self that rely on (1) mind-body dualism, (2) continuous memory over time, and (3) the self as “the locus of autonomous agency” all fall short for explaining how the self is impacted by trauma (2002, 41). First, regarding the limitations of thinking about memories and emotions as primarily cognitive, Brison writes, “my mental state (typically, depression) felt physiological, like lead in my veins, while my physical state (frequently, incapacitation by fear and anxiety) was the incarnation of a cognitive and emotional paralysis resulting from the shattered assumptions about my safety in the world” (2002, 44). Brison points out that traumatic memories “are more tied to the body than memories are typically considered to be”; if a person has been raped, certain triggers can revive memories of the trauma and cause a physical response (like a racing heart or crawling skin) and often these memories and consequent reactions are “lodged in the body” not (only) the mind (2002, 44–45).

Second, conceptions of the self that hinge on continuous memory over time, such as the self as an ongoing, cohesive narrative, are similarly challenged by the aftermath of trauma (Brison Reference Brison2002, 45). Brison points out that because memory is so drastically disrupted by traumatic events, it is difficult to make sense of a view of the narrative self without being willing to accept that the self before the traumatic event is distinct from the self after the traumatic event. Memory is affected in multiple ways by trauma. Memories can be repressed, intrusive, nonveridical, or inconsistent, which makes a previously cohesive narrative (and self) shaky. Not only can memories of life before the trauma become distant or even inaccessible, a person may struggle to envision a future, which further dislocates them. All of this, Brison says, gives rise to an “epistemological crisis [that] leaves the survivor with virtually no bearings to navigate by” (2002, 50).

Third, the view of the self as “the locus of autonomous agency” is similarly upset by the experience of trauma (2002, 59). Trauma “reconfigures the survivor's will, rendering involuntary many responses that were once under voluntary control” such as intrusive thoughts or startle responses that accompany PTSD (Brison Reference Brison2002, 59). Brison notes that this change not only affects what someone can or cannot do, but it also changes what someone wants to do. The entangling of the mind and body, the disruption of memory and the ejection of a person from a previously sensible narrative, and the reconfiguration of an agent's will, according to Brison, stand as evidence that trauma gives rise to the “undoing of the self” (39).

The self becoming undone is not necessarily permanent; a self can be remade. Brison argues that the remaking of a self hinges on an understanding of the self as relational and interdependent. “When the trauma is of human origin and is intentionally inflicted, the kind I discuss in this book, it not only shatters one's fundamental assumptions about the world and one's safety in it, but it also severs the sustaining connection between the self and the rest of humanity” (2002, 40). Feminist philosophers have emphasized the relational nature of the self, which is to say the self is formed and understood by relations to others and sustained by the social contexts in which it exists (2002, 41). Brison argues that one relation necessary for rebuilding the self is the relation between a person post-trauma and empathetic listeners:

Since Brison's book was published in 2002 a lot of work has been done on speech after trauma. Attention to these developments can deepen our understanding of how structures of power can get in the way of speaking and listening after trauma. Next we briefly situate Brison's idea of empathetic listening within contemporary conversations about epistemic injustice.

People speaking about their experiences of trauma face the epistemological challenge of simply being believed. Miranda Fricker introduces terminology that gets widespread uptake for what other thinkers, like Brison, have demonstrated in their work. In her book Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, Fricker explicates two types of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice, when a speaker's credibility is reduced as a result of their marginalized social status; and hermeneutical injustice, an obstruction of the interpretive resources developed from the marginalized perspective that are necessary for understanding the world as it is, including its oppressive features (Fricker Reference Fricker2007, 1). In the case of sexual violence, women are regularly subject to credibility deficits due to their social position, which in turn results in testimonial injustice; their accounts of sexual violence are disbelieved. In order for empathetic listening to achieve what Brison argues it is capable of doing when a speaker's self is undone, a speaker's testimony must be believed.

The nature of our socially influenced unjust epistemic structures further challenges a person who intends to speak about their experience of sexual violence. As Kristie Dotson points out in her paper “Tracking epistemic violence, tracking practices of silencing” (2011) women are in an epistemic position that invites a kind of self silencing in that they are reliably disbelieved as a result of their speech being met with improper uptake. Doston calls this “testimonial smothering.” Testimonial smothering is “the truncating of one's own testimony in order to insure that the testimony contains only content for which one's audience demonstrates testimonial competence” (Dotson Reference Dotson2011, 244). Anticipating that a listener may not believe a speaker's testimony (as a result of identity prejudice or a lack of necessary hermeneutical resources), a speaker will limit or alter their testimony so that their speech, such as it is, can be met with proper uptake. The initial obstacles to empathetic listening, then, are not limited to the kind of testimonial injustice Fricker described, but a speaker herself may be challenged by her own testimonial smothering. Offering a truncated and self-censored version of her experience, tailored to suit a listener, does not empower the kind of speech and listening after trauma that Brison describes. In the case of testimonial smothering, a speaker is not speaking in ways she needs and wants to speak about her experience, a necessary component according to Brison.

Before empathetic listening can be possible, a person's speech about their sexual violence must overcome several epistemic hurdles. Brison's picture of empathetic listening, however, goes beyond the need for survivors to be awarded due epistemic credibility. While Brison is vague about what exactly empathetic listening entails, what is clear is that it involves a more complicated relationship between speaker and listener than what is typically understood in an instance of testimony. For Brison, the kind of empathetic listening that is important for self-rebuilding often occurs between friends and loved ones, that is people with whom we build these self-constitutive relations. In these relations, often, the speaker is already believed. In instances like this, it seems, a person may have overcome the initial epistemic challenges that testimony faces; she can speak freely and her listener believes her insofar as they award her due epistemic credibility. What Brison's account lacks is a more detailed picture of how empathetic listening goes beyond believing survivors. In this project, we aim to build on Brison's account to begin to develop a roadmap for self-remaking empathetic listening.

3. Subversive speech and entangled empathy

In Rape and resistance, Linda Martín Alcoff identifies “a set of programmatic questions concerning the nature of experience and the strategies of resistance vital for the movement against sexual violence to move forward” (2018, 18). Alcoff investigates the relationship between experience and expertise in contexts of sexual violence, paying close attention to how capitalist, white supremacist, misogynist culture co-opts narratives of sexual violence. Alcoff observes, “The impressive amount of survivor discourse that has been disseminated over the last several decades seems to have had little effect on the epidemic of sexual violations. The silence is being broken, but the question is, has our speech become so co-opted and domesticated that its subversive impact has been seriously diminished?” (2018, 183). Citing powerful examples from daytime television talk shows, Alcoff charts patterns of how these television shows “sensationalized and exploited” survivors (2018, 180–81). For example, after hearing from people who have experienced sexual violence, daytime talk show hosts often pivot to an “expert,” e.g. a psychologist or a skeptical third party. “Survivors were constituted as damaged, weak, and dependent upon expert help,” Alcoff explains. As we note in the previous section, speaking as a survivor of sexual violence does not guarantee that audiences will afford you the credibility to theorize about or interpret what happened (2018, 181). There are powerful social, economic, and political forces that work against widespread public recognition of survivors as reliable knowers and the public as reliable listeners.

According to Alcoff, we should learn to identify what she calls “recuperation,” which “works differently than silencing by allowing the speech but subsuming it within existing frameworks in such a way that it is no longer disruptive” (2018, 187). With Brison's call for empathetic listening in mind, we wonder, how can we listen to the narratives of people who have experienced sexual violence without participating in this kind of recuperation and co-optation? Moving forward in this paper, we offer readers practical suggestions for how to avoid endorsing this process of “subsuming” narratives of sexual violence under existing frameworks that ultimately reinforce rather than resist many of the systems of domination and control that support patterns of sexual violence. Alcoff writes, “We need to transform arrangements of speaking to create spaces where survivors are authorized to act as both witnesses and experts, reporters of experience and theorists of experience” (2018, 198). So, what makes speech or the relationship between speakers subversive? Alcoff clarifies this, “Subversive activity is disruptive. Whether it involves lying down in front of cop cars, or marching into banks and making unruly noises, or spray-painting body outlines on college sidewalks, sometimes we need to disrupt the smooth flows of capitalist and patriarchal commerce” (2018, 201).

We now build on Alcoff's discussion of “subversive activity” to consider possible obstacles individuals may encounter when attempting to serve as the empathetic listeners Brison describes as necessary to the process of remaking the self. We should not assume we know how to listen empathetically. Lori Gruen develops the practice of “entangled empathy,” or “a type of caring perception focused on attending to another's experience of wellbeing” that recognizes our interdependence and aims “to be responsive and responsible in these relationships by attending to another's needs, interests, desires, vulnerabilities, hopes, and sensitivities” (Reference Gruen2015, 3). We follow Gruen in thinking we can “hone our skills” and improve on how we practice empathy (Reference Gruen2015, 82). This matters as we explore Brison's claim about the importance of empathetic listeners for the process of remaking the self after violence. What skills do we need to reliably become empathetic listeners in this context? We should worry about failing in this role.

Gruen explains how “empathy can go wrong” and identifies two specific ways empathy can fail. She writes, “Sometimes there are things we don't know or perceive adequately enough. These are what I call epistemic inaccuracies. There are also mistakes that we make when we try to weigh values in different situations. These are what I call ethical inaccuracies” (2015: 82).Footnote ² To this we add that empathy can go wrong when we slip into socially conditioned scripts and listen as if we are playing a role inappropriate to our actual subject position, e.g. listening as if we are cross-examiners, physicians, professors, fixers, or listeners who too quickly refocus the conversation on our own traumatic experiences. This may (and we suspect often does) happen unbeknownst to the listener. When a listener adopts scripts associated with these common societal roles in an attempt to condemn, diagnose, understand, fix, or relate, they risk overdetermining the conversation and inhibiting the speaker's ability to communicate in ways that assist with the process of remaking the self after sexual violence.

Consider the popularity of “true crime” and medical dramas. When listening to those sharing their experiences of sexual violence, we can imagine having made the mistake of adopting patterns of questioning like a prosecutor based on the popular media we have consumed that features sexual violence. To correct empathetic mistakes, Gruen argues:

Building on Gruen's notion that we can improve as empathetic listeners and Alcoff's discussion of subversive speech as disruptive, we offer our account of subversive listening. By subversive listening, we mean practices of listening aimed at resisting and disrupting the tendency to respond to accounts of sexual violence in ways that are inappropriate given our relationship to the speaker. As listeners, we do not begin from a neutral epistemic nor empathetic stance. This is why subversive listening is necessary; we begin already playing defense against dominant frameworks that will subsume these narratives unless we resist. We diagnose the following pattern and problem:

These socially conditioned scripts often reinforce the “smooth flows of capitalist and patriarchal commerce” (Alcoff Reference Alcoff2018, 201) and resisting these scripts makes empathetic listening difficult. But, with Gruen, we think it is worth trying.

So, in order to become the kind of empathetic listeners Brison describes, we may need to engage in subversive listening along the way, with the aim of disrupting our tendencies to co-opt, correct, undermine, or over-identify with a speakers’ narrative of sexual violence. We ought to think more about what it means to be empathetic listeners who are aware of possible obstacles and actively work to avoid them. Gruen's account of entangled empathy offers a valuable starting point for identifying obstacles because, by virtue of being entangled, we are susceptible to epistemic and ethical mistakes as we attempt to serve as empathetic listeners. As Gruen explains, her account of empathy resists how “traditional theories tend to ignore or downplay not just the meaning of the relationships we are in, but the way those relationships shape who we are” (2015, 14).

4. Avoiding obstacles by practicing subversive listening

In this section, we identify five obstacles to avoid when attempting to serve as an empathetic listener for someone who is sharing their experience of sexual violence. This list is not exhaustive; we encourage readers to build on our work. To identify these obstacles, we pay close attention to the overextension of certain frameworks. These frameworks can do important work in specific and limited domains. The overextension of these frameworks inappropriately stretches them beyond their scope. We suggest five different frameworks: the legal, medical, academic, fixing, and identifying that, when overextended, obstruct empathic listening.Footnote ³

We offer Table 1 with the aim of assisting readers in avoiding common obstacles that obstruct empathetic listening in the context of sexual violence. We do not think that these obstacles operate in mutually exclusive ways; it is common for listeners to meet multiple obstacles when listening to a speaker share a narrative of sexual violence.

Table 1 Listening as if one is x, where x plays a widely socially recognizable role and that role has prescribed pathways of uptake, but the listener is not x.

First, in a legal setting, understanding speech after trauma often focuses on verdictive, juridical or punitive goals; we call this the legal framework. When the legal framework is overextended, the listener acts as if they are an investigator. For example, it may be tempting for a listener to hear a person's experience and ask for details to make the narrative make sense in a certain timeline or location; this reaction is a symptom of overextending the legal framework by treating the narrative first and foremost as evidence that needs to be linear and consistent. The investigator risks co-opting the narrative in the name of justice or “objective” truth. When this framework is overextended by listeners, empathetic listening is hindered.

Second, in a medical setting, understanding speech after trauma focuses on assessment, diagnosis, and treatment; this is the medical framework. When a traumatic experience is shared in the context of healthcare, the listener (a therapist, psychiatrist, physician, or other health care provider) will likely prioritize the diagnosis of the person, relying on their knowledge of trauma and PTSD to understand a person's story to provide treatment. This framework is necessary in a certain setting, but when the primary goal is empathic listening, the extension of this framework to non-medical settings can be obstructive. An overextension of the medical framework sets up the listener as a clinician. For example, the friend of someone harmed may be tempted to psychologize their friend's narrative by using what they learned in their own therapy. This temptation is likely enhanced by the proliferation of armchair psychology and sensationalization of psychology in the media.

Third, in an academic setting, understanding speech after trauma focuses on, broadly, theoretic importance and implications; we call this the academic framework. For an academic, the temptation might be to fit a person's experience of sexual violence into a conceptual schema for harm, to use the expression of that experience as anecdotal support for a theory. The overextension of the academic framework positions the listener as a professor. One need not be an academic to overextend the academic framework as we see in examples of mansplaining, when someone acts as if they have the authority to explain instead of listening to the speaker.

Fourth, in social settings, listening to speech after trauma is vulnerable to the listener acting primarily as someone who wants to quickly fix or improve the situation; we call this the fixing framework. By overextending the fixing framework, the listener aims to support the speaker by attempting to fix the situation without invitation to fix. This often takes the form of unsolicited advice. Brison points to this overextension when she describes the way her loved ones were reluctant to talk about her experience because they were worried about retraumatizing or upsetting her; this worry of the listener, that they would trigger or further hurt the person harmed, can actually prohibit the kind of empathetic listening required for the rebuilding of self (Brison Reference Brison2002, 12–13). This overextension is particularly pernicious because a listener can seem to be listening in the “right” way and still obstruct the remaking of self. The fixing framework may include approaches developed in social activist spaces, e.g. the tactic of de-centering the perpetrator to be victim-focused in anti-violence work. Here, the obstacle to empathetic listening shows up as a temptation to privilege being seen as a “good feminist” or politically correct activist over listening carefully to the speaker.

The fifth framework that gets overextended is what we call the identifying framework. Falling prey to the overextension of this framework leads to over-identifying with a speaker. Given the importance of the #MeToo movement, it is not surprising that sometimes a listener will jump too quickly to share their own experiences in order to establish trust or solidarity. However, it is so important to stay present with the person sharing their experiences. When listening, a listener should think carefully about if and when they want to share their own story.

To summarize, by identifying these five common overextensions of dominant social and professional frameworks, we invite readers to engage in subversive listening. Subversive listening is necessary because when we attempt to serve as empathetic listeners for those who have experienced sexual violence, we do so already entrenched in dominant frameworks for attending to this violence. So, try to resist slipping into these recognizable, often internalized roles when you are listening by asking yourself, “Am I acting as if I am x when I am not x?” Given our focus on the practical value of identifying these obstacles, we now turn to The apology by author, artist, and activist V (formerly Eve Ensler) to demonstrate subversive listening.

5. Reading V's The apology to practice subversive listening

The apology is a brave and brutal book in which V writes a letter to herself in the voice of her late father, Arthur, who sexually, physically, and emotionally abused her. Through V's father's perspective, you see and feel along with him and her as he rapes and abuses young V. Arthur observes the dismantling of V's sense of self because of his continued abuse. He watches as the effects of the trauma he inflicted cascade into toxic relationships, physical and mental health problems, and embodied pain for his daughter. The apology is a detailed remembering from Arthur for V. After a lifetime of waiting, V wrote the apology she never received. This is a difficult text to understand given its form and content, which makes it especially vulnerable to the obstacles we argue often obstruct empathetic listening after sexual violence. We offer examples of how a reader may encounter these obstacles in The apology and suggest how they might engage in subversive listening instead.

First, we are confident a reader will need to resist the urge to overextend the legal framework. In her father's voice, V writes, “I beat a child half my size. I battered a little girl. I used my hands, my fist, and belts as whips” (Ensler Reference Ensler2019, 72); “Your violent death was ever present. And each murderous episode escalated the states and the brutality” (2019, 76); “I wanted you dead, Eve. I tried on several occasions to murder you. I had to kill what I had already destroyed. I had to erase the evidence” (2019, 70–71). Upon reading these passages, a reader will be tempted to think punitively, especially because V's father was not prosecuted for his crimes before he died. But if the reader becomes fixated on reading for evidence of criminal wrongdoing, they will fail to attend to other important aspects of this text, namely the fact that V writes this as an apology, not primarily as a confession.

Second, a reader is likely to think, “V's father was a psychopathic narcissist.” She even has him ask himself this question:

While V's father observes that thinking of himself as a psychopath would be an easy way out, that is also true for the reader who may be tempted to think of The apology as an account of the inner workings of someone who engages in child sexual abuse. By doing this, a listener misses V's point because the aim is not to diagnose her father. The aim is for her father to apologize to her.

Third, a reader may be tempted to overextend the academic framework by becoming fixated on how the text fits into or resists established theoretical models of apology and forgiveness. The genre of this text is unclear; it does not fit neatly into existing academic disciplinary categories. V begins the letter with the following questions, “Am I writing in a language I never spoke or understood which you have created inside both of our minds to bridge the gaps, the failures to connect? Maybe I am writing as I truly am, as you have freed me by your witness. Or I'm not writing this at all but simply being used as a vehicle to fulfill your own needs and version of things” (Ensler Reference Ensler2019, 1). As philosophers, we were especially vulnerable to the overextension of the academic framework. For example, when we first approached this text, we were tempted to investigate it as a speech act. A reader may also get stuck thinking too much about what it means for V to imagine what her dead father would have said to her. It is also worth noting here that one might be tempted to overextend both the medical and the academic frameworks simultaneously as they think about what it means for her to create what is “inside both of our minds to bridge the gaps” (2019, 1).

Fourth, an empathetic reader will have the overwhelming desire to “fix” so many of the situations described in the letter. At one point near the middle of The apology, V has her father question the value of such a detailed recounting. He asks, “Yes, I realize there is no apology without a meticulous accounting. But I seriously wonder if unearthing the depth of my cruelty and confirming it to you might be more devastating than curing. Will knowing the harsh specifics of my vicious actions serve your self-hatred, or your freeing?” (2019, 45). A reader who overextends the fixing framework may be tempted to argue V's “meticulous accounting” of the abuse her father inflicted serves “self-hatred” and risks retraumatizing. However, when serving as an empathetic listener, it is so important not to interrupt this recounting in the name of “fixing” or “saving” the speaker from sharing because of one's own discomfort as a listener. Of course, we know too often people who experience sexual violence are expected to repeat their narratives, especially if they report this abuse in medical and criminal justice systems. If we can work with the person who experienced sexual violence to limit the number of times they need to share what happened, this is importantly different from failing to listen and attempting to “fix” because we are uncomfortable with what we are hearing.

Finally, a reader may overextend the identifying framework when reading The Apology, especially because of the structure of the text. V's decision to write the apology from her father in the form of a letter to her means the reader often encounters the second personal “you”:

When serving as an empathetic listener, then, the reader may need to engage in subversive listening in order to resist the urge to read the “you” first and foremost as themselves instead of V. The apology ends with the following words, “Eve, I free you from the covenant. I revoke the lie. I lift the curse. Old man, be gone” (2019, 112). We read the last few sentences of The apology repeatedly. We feel the release and freedom that V describes when she writes, “Old man, be gone.” If a reader too quickly pivots to their own experiences and away from V's narrative when reading this text, they risk neglecting the importance of the ending of the letter.

V has expressed ways that The apology has been transformative for her; most notably, perhaps, is that V changed her name after sharing her story through The apology. In 2020, she wrote on her website:

The “About” section of her website now features the following quotation from journalist Arifa Akbar, “She is no longer Eve Ensler, not since writing her memoir, The apology, which excavated the dead father who violently abused her throughout her childhood. She is now V, joyously freed from the last vestige of that prescribed paternal identity” (V 2022). While initially we were uncertain how to understand The apology, it is clear that the text is, at least, an act of remaking the self for V. We contend that by engaging in subversive listening aimed at addressing and avoiding obstacles to empathetic listening, we are better positioned to witness the transformative power of a text like The apology.