(Re-)Placing the #MeToo movement: power, shame, and autobiographical narratives

Kurzfassung/Abstract

This thesis discusses the #MeToo movement as a political and social protest movement that responds to the dynamics of sexualized violence with collectivized autobiographical narratives. It is a response to the processes of de-placing, which are perhaps most visible in the properties of shame. De-placing is a key concept in this thesis, describing an (affective) inability to speak or be heard. A feminist analysis of shame outlines it as a mechanism of hegemonic patriarchal power dynamics, facilitating the placelessness of victims of sexualized violence. However, a feminist analysis of both shame and power also demands room for resistance. The possibilities of resistance are explored as processes of re-placing. This analysis is placed in the center of a (feminist) tension between disempowerment and empowerment, proposing a conceptual approach that embraces a productive tension in the #MeToo movement.
The #MeToo movement constructs itself on the basis of autobiographical narratives; some as short as a Tweet and others as long as a memoir. Thus, this thesis explores the productive ambivalence between narratives of shame/de-placing and agency/re-placing through literary analysis. These readings focus on how #MeToo literature negotiates narratives of shame and shame resistance – powerlessness and empowerment – through digital spheres, the courtroom, and the site of abuse.
The autobiographical narratives that dynamically construct the #MeToo movement dismantle the de-placing properties of shame in their collectivized demand to (agentically) be in place. Yet, these narratives reveal the limits of (affective) agency vis-à-vis the hegemonic patriarchal power dynamics they respond to. As this tension remains unresolved, it can only lead to a discussion of and need for pure feminist rage.