Open Collections

Connor, Benjamin

University of British Columbia

Attempts to address sexual violence against men and boys (SVAMB) within the Holocaust and Indian Residential Schools (IRS) contexts have achieved varying levels of success. Research concerning SVAMB during the Holocaust is still in its infancy, while the IRS context, primarily through the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, has made SVAMB a foundational aspect of its discourse. However, both contexts have neglected to engage questions of sexual agency, which are integral to understanding how individuals attempt to survive violence and, in some cases, resist their oppressors. This thesis seeks to first develop and later put into practice with Holocaust and IRS survivor testimonies an approach for considering the complex invocations of agency in these violent contexts in relation to SVAMB and/or sexual barter. Specifically, my thesis draws from Jewish Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi, lesbian-feminist theorist Anne Cvetkovich, and European intellectual historian Dominick LaCapra to articulate a multidirectional approach that positions the body as a non-sovereign site of ongoing negotiations, which functions to (1) shift “agency” from a fixed, transferrable concept, (2) nuance and make visible how victims/survivors engage in forms of sexual agency and/or resistance during and after a sex act, and (3) understand how individuals may “act out” and “work through” their sexual trauma. After, I apply this approach to testimonies from the following individuals to articulate forms of sexual justice, propose a method of addressing complex forms of lateral violence, and advocate for addressing sexual trauma at both the community and individual level: Holocaust survivors Heinz Heger and Gad Beck, and residential school survivors Tomson Highway, Richard Hall, and Laurie McDonald. Ultimately, my project addresses unresolved traumatic histories stemming from sexual violence that permeate the lives of survivors and risk being reproduced within their biological/queer chosen families today.

Text

2023-10-18

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/86184

English

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/