Assembling Justice: Reviving Nonhuman Subjectivities to Examine Institutional Betrayal Around Sexual Misconduct

Abstract

While some colleges have adopted bystander intervention and restorative justice practices to address sexual misconduct as a community issue, psychoanalytic institutes facing crises of sexual misconduct have typically relied on the tried-and-true tactic of identifying the neoliberal individual as the sole site of trouble. Successful strategies used in colleges can be applied to the psychoanalytic setting by focusing on institutional betrayal. This systemic, community-based approach decenters not only individual bodies but human subjectivities. Here institutions become not just containers for group or networked affect, as if affect itself emanates from individuals into an institution. Agency and affect emerge through networks, not individual bodies, and institutions are active agents in violent betrayal. Acknowledging the ways the nonhuman and the human co-emerge creates the space to hold the vitalities and agencies of both, including multiple potentialities for (re)traumatization, resistance, and transformation.

Psychological and Societal Implications of Projecting the Shadow on the Feminine in Tibetan Buddhist Contexts

“…This person then reported to know some people who were first ignored when they tried to bring abuse to light in the group (#11) and that neither the lama nor his group would have admitted abuse (#11), even after they later have given the files to an investigation (#11). Despite singularizing individuals with shifting the issues on them, the persons in the groups acting in such ways are "agents in violent betrayal" [15].…”

Initial Reports From Early Adopters of Restorative Justice for Reported Cases of Campus Sexual Misconduct: A Qualitative Study

“…Using an Excel spreadsheet, codes were organized according to identified themes so that researchers could easily identify discrepancies visually. Additionally, a third member of the research team acted as the intercoder to ensure greater reliability of the findings and to reconcile the few remaining codes that could not be reconciled (Hruschka et al, 2004). The final step was for researchers to review and organize the final codes into themes.…”

“…Given the confluence of a complex regulatory landscape under Title IX, the conflation of campus adjudication processes with criminal justice approaches to resolve these CSM cases (Javorka & Campbell, 2021), and a pattern of low reporting rates among CSM survivors (Sabina & Ho, 2014), particularly among students of diverse racial backgrounds, gender identities, and sexual orientations (Brubaker & Mancini, 2017), creative approaches to addressing instances of CSM are required. Student activists and scholars have pointed out that rather than retraumatizing survivors, institutional responses to sexual misconduct ought to attend to the human needs that occur as a result of CSM (Brodsky, 2016;Gentile, 2018;Koss et al, 2014). Restorative justice (RJ) is an approach to resolving Title IX cases that emphasizes the particularities of context and care for the parties involved, and that can be tailored to meet the needs of the harmed party, the respondent, and the campus community.…”