Collective trauma? Isolating and commoning gender-based violence

This paper considers the tensions between individual and collective experiences, responses framings in gender-based violence (GBV). I explore three concepts that aid understanding of GBV – isolating, trauma commoning question their utility process survival. The arguments are evidenced with survivors’ testimony from a participatory action research project on experiences GBV. First, isolating survivors, taking multiple forms, is not just ‘how it is’, but condition created exploited by perpetrators buttressed social perceptions practices to reduce access sources support. Second, consider whether might be thought as trauma, concept Black postcolonial literatures describe structural traumas communal nature. aspects experiencing, surviving rebuilding GBV, resonances discontinuities this notion trauma. Third, emphasises mutual resistance violence, better reflects diverse It offers an alternative promise care era shrinking neoliberalising service provision, illuminating existing which survivors feminist organisations work make remake