Queering Self-Care: Reimagining The Radical Possibilities of Self-Care In Healing From Sexual Assault

Authors

  • Emily Dutton University of Alberta

Abstract

Self-care is an umbrella term for the personal strategies, activities and routines used by survivors to manage the trauma of sexual assault. This paper explores the appropriation of self-care practices in neoliberal ‘risk-management’ and ‘prevention’ discourses. By tracing the problematic impact that neoliberalism has had on mainstream social, medical and political narratives surrounding healing from sexual assault, this paper calls for a ‘queering’ of self-care. In theorizing ‘queer self-care’, this paper works to reclaim and redefine self-care in way which challenges pathologized healing narratives, and validates ‘non normative’ means of coping and caring for the self as valuable to the process of healing from sexual assault.

Author Biography

Emily Dutton, University of Alberta

Department of Women's and Gender Studies, University of Alberta, 4th Year 

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Published

2014-10-25