TELLING THE UNSPEAKABLE

Telling the unspeakable. This is what we find in the narratives published in the report produced by the Independent Commission for the Study of Sexual Abuse of Children in the Catholic Church. The victims' accounts demonstrate how the past still remains present in the lives of those who had the courage to tell the public about their most private experiences. Finding the words that can bring the other closer to this very painful past is a complex and challenging task, but one that has all the potential to bring significant and lasting benefits. We often encounter this effort to find the words to recount traumatic experiences in literature. Autobiography, for example, is a representational space in which childhood trauma is often worked through, as it provides the temporal framework and narrative progression necessary to address core issues that reverberate from a young age through adulthood. On the fictional side, the novel of formation is another suitable genre for such an account, since it seeks to map the development of the character in his or her formative period, paying particular attention to the processes of identity construction, social and family influences, and possible traumatic events and their consequences. An example of this dynamic can be found in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, an autobiography originally published in 1969 and translated into Portuguese in 2017 by Antígona. Here, the author recounts the rape that she suffered at the age of seven and the consequences of this violence on her development, such as the deep depression that she experienced and the loss of speech for more than five years. This mutism is related by Angelou to the sense of guilt she experienced, resulting from the trauma in question and reinforced after the murder of the perpetrator a few days later at the hands of some members of her family. For a long time Angelou believed the telling had been responsible for this violence and was therefore unable to utter any other words, for fear of causing even more pain. It was only later that Angelou was able to realize that it was she who had been the real victim.

Assuming that language is a form of agency, telling becomes an act of transformation. Despite the limits of language, which is incapable of completely narrating events in all their aspects and perceptions, the attempt to order the past, what one felt and what one perceived about a certain moment of our lives, becomes already potentially positive in the very understanding of our reality as subjects and of what our childhood and youth were. By sharing the representation of our personal narratives, it is possible to better understand the development of the ego in a retrospective way, by connecting the dots that bring us to the present moment. The act of telling transforms our own understanding of the past.

The social role of this telling is also clear, since it narrows the space between the victim and society, not only in the personal field, but also in the collective one. The isolation caused by the traumatic experience, as well as the vulnerability, fear, and shame that can result from it, weakens when the experience is shared with others, when this past is verbalized and actively heard. Above all because it is possible to perceive that one is not alone, that there are people concerned about hearing/reading what one wants to say, and also concerned about changing the circumstances that made it possible for that violence to occur. Sharing desirably allows the emergence of a broad front of condemnation to the systems and subjects responsible for the pain that was imposed on vulnerable bodies and subjectivities. In the case of the volume of reports identified by the Independent Commission for the Study of Sexual Abuse of Children in the Catholic Church, it signals the structural character of this type of violence, unveiling the mechanisms for maintaining silence and allowing for a more faithful appreciation of this reality. It is also expected to give rise to the creation of measures that seek to combat these practices. The socialization of this past creates, in different ways, tools for overcoming the trauma when we consider that, by reporting these episodes, the people who were victims of abuse are taking the narrative control out of the hands of the perpetrators, becoming active subjects of their own history. And this can effectively be a way to deal with violent and painful pasts.

Gonçalo Cholant

Invited Assistant Professor at FLUC, Researcher at the Trauma Observatory/CES