VICTIM STORIES: DOCUMENTING PAIN, PUNISHMENT, PRISON AND POWER

Pages247-259
Date09 December 2003
Published date09 December 2003
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(03)30010-9
AuthorAlexandra Juhasz
VICTIM STORIES: DOCUMENTING
PAIN, PUNISHMENT, PRISON
AND POWER
Alexandra Juhasz
ABSTRACT
Can the crisis of women’s victimization in prison be representedin ways that
challenge this harm without its self-perpetuation? As a documentary scholar
and maker,this was my overriding concern for an activist video project about
women and prison. Certainly, documentary and prison tell us much about
each other in their shared capacity to weaken some and strengthen others,
by way of technologies of vision and distance, while buttressing hegemonic
power. Our project was to minimize the possibility of documentary as prison
by taking responsibility for the victim documentary itself as a system of power
and pain, objectification and punishment.
Unless people have the chance to tell the stories of their pain and suffering,they are diminished
and,yes,victimized.Yettelling one’sstoryasavictimstoryrisksreducingoneselftostereotypes
of suffering. Describing yourself as a victim has a self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating feature;
and yet, failing to acknowledge or assert one’s victimization leavesthe harm unaddressed and
the perpetrators unchallenged. Martha Minnow, “SurvivingVictim Talk”
Punishment, Politics, and Culture
Studies in Law, Politics, and Society,Volume 30, 247–259
Copyright © 2004 by Elsevier Ltd.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 1059-4337/doi:10.1016/S1059-4337(03)30010-9
247

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