Download the thesis - South Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault

Scarry says that the beautiful thing is incomparable and seems to inspire a sense of
newness/newborn-ness (23). When that beautiful thing is artwork created out of
broken lives and damaged materials, such as broken bits of tiles and crockery as
mosaics, or emerges from the earth as clay sculptures, the sense of newborn-ness is
more than simply a metaphor. It is an expression of what creativity does: “You are in
the presence of something life giving, lifesaving”, as Scarry remarks (27). In delving
into shadowy places in and through their art, victims in this study found that rather
than stimulating more sorrow and negativity, things that had been lost, or thought
lost, were found. Like the torch the artist Canova 2 places in the hand of the mourner
to bring light into the devastating darkness of loss (see Chapter 8), the participants’
own creativity brought light to the darkness, and opened the way to expression,
consolation and restoration.
In the context of this work about trauma, the words listed above, which are quoted
from participants’ own statements, have particular potency and value. Sexual abuse
had left each participant depleted and most feeling profoundly disconnected from
themselves, others and the world. Some were unable to feel or see anything as being
positive or as ever having the potential to be positive. Having “no inner beauty”, being
“bad all bad”, unlovable, dirty, not human and unworthy are words and expressions I
heard many times used to describe the internalisation of abuse. “We talk ourselves
into existence”, say Debbie Horsfall, Hilary Byrne-Armstrong and Rod Rothwell in
arguing that the language of the discourse to which we belong shapes us: “we are not
in charge of language; rather language and social practices are in charge of us” (in
Higgs and Titchen 91). When women are part of the discourse of sexual abuse and
victimhood, the statements from participants above are part of the existence into
which they have “been talked”; when the women are part of a discourse of creativity
and community, the existence into which they “are talked” includes the language with
which I began this section.
Therese Schmid discusses creativity in relation to health through the practice of self-
2 Antonio Canova, artist of Uxori optimae Albertus (To The Perfect Wife of Albert)
c1800. Tomb of the Archduchess Christina, daughter of Maria Theresa, in the Church
of the Augustines. Vienna, Austria.
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