Identificar las fuentes de beneficios y construir una estructura jerárquica de beneficios

Kirsty Dotson also analyses the problem of epistemological violence and explores this concept through an examination of silencing. She argues that this violence materialises through two methods of testimonial oppression: testimonial quieting and testimonial smothering.

4.3.1. Silencing Through Testimonial Quieting

Dotson defines testimonial quieting as a practice of silencing, as opposed to a once off event (2011, p.241). According to Dotson, this practice can be thus considered reliable, and with regards to pornography discourse, it can be argued that a practice of silencing reliably occurs in relation to hearing performers’ testimonies. She states:

The problem of testimonial quieting occurs when an audience fails to identify a speaker as a knower. A speaker needs an audience to identify, or at least recognize her as a knower in order to offer testimony (2011, p.242).

As discussed in this chapter, we shall explore how the performer is excluded from the status of expert in the pornography debate and dismissed as non-representative. Dotson illustrates her

argument through the example of Patricia Hill Collins who argues that black women are subjected to ‘controlling images’ of themselves that contribute to stereotypes and stigma, and hence also to silencing (Collins, 2000, cited in Dotson, 2011, p.243). In the case of performers, it appears this is also the case, where their controlling images position them as abused women, often drug addicts and criminal or deviant. In this chapter, we will explore this positioning- how it leads to stigma, and how it functions as epistemological violence in the feminist discourse on pornography.

4.3.2. Silencing though Testimonial Smothering

Dotson further identifies a second kind of silencing, which she labels as testimonial smothering, which occurs when a person self-silences due to a lack of faith in having their testimony truly heard. She states:

Testimonial smothering, ultimately, is the truncating of one's own testimony in order to insure that the testimony contains only content for which one's audience demonstrates testimonial competence. Testimonial smothering exists in testimonial exchanges that are charged with complex social and epistemic concerns (2011, p.244).

Dotson explains that testimonial smothering is a result of three conditions:

1) the content of the testimony must be unsafe and risky; 2) the audience must demonstrate testimonial incompetence with respect to the content of the testimony to the speaker; and 3) testimonial incompetence must follow from, or appear to follow from, pernicious ignorance (2011, p.244).

This kind of silencing is not truly voluntary but is instead coerced silencing. Testimonial smothering results from this fear of contributing to stigma and Chapter Five will highlight examples of this from performers. Dotson points to Kimberlé Crenshaw who exemplifies this by outlining how domestic violence is often not reported in black communities for fear of

contributing to the wider stereotype that black men are inherently violent (1991, cited in Dodson, 2011, p.244). The concepts of testimonial incompetence and inaccurate intelligibility are also at play here. Dotson explains the concept of inaccurate intelligibility as occurring when the audience demonstrates that they will not listen to the nuance and intelligibility of the story.

Instead, the audience will disbelieve testimony of the performer in favour of controlling images, stigma, or discourse from those granted expert status such as academics, politicians, etc. This hierarchy of listening privilege will be discussed further on in this chapter. Chapter Five addresses how societal stigma towards performers is noted in various studies which highlights how widespread this testimonial competence towards performers is, and how its acceptance as ‘true’ has complications for ethical research.

Thus Dotson argues that in order to avoid epistemological violence, the audience need to prove that they have the capacity to listen intelligibly in order to achieve reciprocity in communication (2011, p.238) where the speaker feels heard and believed. This is a requirement that Dotson believes the speaker needs in order to safely impart their testimony. This can also be considered extra labour by the performer who has to decide if the listener is able to provide this reciprocation, this extra labour is not undertaken by the listener and is thus asymmetrical labour. This reciprocation is also necessary for the speaker to gain subject status instead of being positioned as object, while the audience retains subject status exclusively. In academic research, achieving a subject-subject relationship instead of a subject-object relationship would provide a safer space to discuss lived experiences, and would work to minimise the likelihood of committing epistemological violence.

Dotson suggests that this form of epistemological violence stems from what she terms

‘pernicious ignorance’, defining this as ignorance that harms another person (2011, p.248).

While ignorance that is not harmful may be present in many fields (what Dotson calls reliable ignorance), pernicious ignorance is context dependent and related to how power is operating in the discourse to determine who is heard and who is silenced- thus contributing to harm.

Pernicious ignorance means an audience does not reciprocate in dialogue in effect and thus leads to testimonial silencing as the speaker deems it to be unsafe to share testimony, developing a sense that they will not be believed.

Dotson also points to Langton’s concept of locutionary silencing and how power operates through this silencing. As speakers may feel no one will listen to them, they self-silence despite wishing to speak. Langton argues: ‘[t]hey do not protest at all, because they think that protest is futile … [these] speakers fail to perform even a locutionary act (Langton, 1993, p.315). If performers feel they will not be listened to, they may feel it is pointless to engage in research projects. This labelling also contributes to epistemological violence by positioning the performers as the problematic group, without highlighting this testimonial smothering. Thus, this phrasing without nuance operates further as testimonial quieting and as a vehicle of stripping power and agency further from performers. This may also function as an example of what Langton frames as ‘illocutionary disablement’ (2009, p.5). While Langton was referring to pornography and its effects on women in society, this expression can also be applied to the effect of discourse upon the discussed group- in this case, feminist discourse upon women performers in pornography industry.

4.3.3. Refusal to Speak

There is a further response to testimonial smothering and quieting. There is power to be found in refusing to speak, and a refusal to participate in an asymmetrical process. In rejecting the position of subaltern, a performer may maintain subjectivity and exercise power in refusing to engage with a process that may frame them in ways they do not consent to. Performers may find power in refusing to have to justify their subjectivity and have to give up details of personal issues such as abuse to a potentially hostile audience. This potential for exercise of agency cannot be dismissed. While it may be difficult to identify due to testimonial quieting and smothering, it cannot be discounted as a possibility. This will be further discussed in Chapter Five, in relation to stigma and speaking.

4.3.4. Reciprocity

In order to achieve successful dialogue, Dotson contends that the speaker must feel like they are being heard, and reciprocity must be present. Without this reciprocity, the speaker is subject to epistemological violence as their testimony is dismissed or unheard, and the speaker is positioned outside the realm of expert. For Foucault, this silencing contributes to a maintaining of the episteme. For Bahktin, this approach of silencing testimony produces a monologism- that is, one single voice is heard, at the expense of dialogism where a multitude of voices and experiences are heard (Robinson, 2011). Allowing for dialogism and micro narratives in researching lived experiences means that instead of a singular ‘truth’ being established through epistemological violence, a richer analysis of varying experiences can be established, with a minimised risk of a construction of otherness. This approach also allows for an ethical subject-subject relationship to be more accessible, rather than continuing to frame the researched person as Other. Robinson explains:

In monologism, ‘truth’, constructed abstractly and systematically from the dominant perspective, is allowed to remove the rights of consciousness. Each subject’s ability to produce autonomous meaning is denied. Qualitative difference is rendered quantitative. This performs a kind of discursive ‘death’ of the other, who, as unheard and unrecognised, is in a state of non-being. The monological word ‘gravitates towards itself and its referential object’ (2011).

Thus it follows that in the discourse around pornography, when often one perspective only is permitted to be valid, a monologism is produced which works to silence those who challenge this dominant narrative. Ideology is taken as truth in this approach. This violence positions the performers’ testimony of positive experiences in the realm of the unsayable. Since this produces a death of the other, as Robinson argues, it can thus be viewed as violence. As we will explore in this research project, this death is not merely symbolic, but has real world implications through its contribution to stigma for performers.