The Politics of Survivorship

the long version

In The Politics of Survivorship, Champagne explores a range of cultural representations of incest, from the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, to mother-daughter incest in contemporary true crime novels, to Oprah Winfrey's television special Scared Silent, in order to examine expressions of survivorship. In the process, Champagne attempts to level the disparity and the hierarchy of value among theory, literature, popular culture, and social movements. Champagne makes a powerful argument that community and academic feminists should embrace survivorship as a potential site of feminist political intervention into patriarchy and heterosexism. She concludes with a critical look at the way in which the False Memory Syndrome Foundation has conducted an antifeminist campaign against incest survivors and their therapists.