The Power of Testimony, the Experiences of Women

Abstract

The aim of this article is to specify the relationships between corporal experiences of women and testimony. A long habit of subordination has expropriated the women of the possibility of speaking of their bodily experiences. Thus, the importance of the singularity of their testimonies, which implies beginning to speak in a situation of impossibility of the language. This is always the account of a traumatic event, but which could also not be spoken about. The individual who speaks shows an awareness that, even though insufficient, constitutes a knowledge that has not been registered before. The testimony brings into play the link between language and documentation. It demands a subjectivity that is able to testify the very possibility of speaking, an individual capable of speaking “unprecedented” words, and who produces, with it, an ethical intervention. The authority of testimony depends on an immemorial relationship between the unspeakable and that which can be said, it produces a word which mentions a singular experience. Women’s words who account bodily experiences mention a fundamental dimension of our experience: the experience of sexual difference. It produces a dislocation in the alleged neutrality of the language. This is a reflection which opens up the possibility of naming the unspeakable.