Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-rwnhh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-18T17:54:37.608Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Women, “False” Memory, and Personal Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Sue Campbell
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We contest each other's memory claims all the time. I am concerned with how the contesting of memory claims and narratives may be an integral part of many abusive situations. I use the writings of Otto Weininger and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation to explore a particular strategy of discrediting women as rememberers, making them more vulnerable to sexual harm. This strategy relies on the presentation of women as unable to maintain a stable enough sense of self or identity to be trustworthy testifiers to their own harm.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , Spring 1997 , pp. 51 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alcoff, Linda and Gray, Laura. 1992. Survivor discourse: Transgression or recuperation? Signs 18(2): 260–90.Google Scholar
Baier, Annette. 1985a. Cartesian persons. Ii Postures of the mind: Essays on mind and morals. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Baier, Annette. 1985b. Mixing memory and desire. Ii Postures of the mind: Essays on mind and morals. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Bartky, Sandra. 1990. Shame and gender. Ii Femininity and domination: Studies in the phenomenology of oppression. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bekerman, D. A. and Bowers, J. M. 1983. Eyewitness testimony: Were we misled? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 9(1): 139–45.Google Scholar
Borland, Katherine. 1991. “That's not what I said”: Interpretive conflict in oral narrative research. Ii Women's words: The feminist practice of oral history, ed. Gluck, Sherna Berger and Patai, Daphne. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Campbell, Sue. 1993. Autobiography and the conditions of personhood. Paper presented at the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy, September, University of Calgary.Google Scholar
Campbell, Sue. 1995. Memory, suggestibility, and social skepticism. Paper presented at the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy, October, University of Western Ontario.Google Scholar
Coady, C. A. J. 1992. Testimony: A philosophical study. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Code, Lorraine. 1991. What can she know? Feminist theory and the construction of knowledge. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Culbertson, Roberta. 1995. Embodied memory, transcendence, and telling: Recounting trauma, re‐establishing the self. Ii New Literary History 26: 169–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crews, Frederick. 1994 The revenge of the repressed. Parts 1 and 2. New York Review of Books 41, 19: 54–59; 20: 49‐‐58.Google Scholar
Dennett, Daniel. 1978. The conditions of personhood. In Amélie Rorty, The identities of persons, ed. Rorty, Amélie. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Dillon, Robyn. n.d. Emotions and self‐respect. Manuscript.Google Scholar
False Memory Syndrome Foundation. 1994. Pamphlet. Included with material for the conference “Memory and Reality: Reconciliation (Scientific, Clinical, and Legal Issues of False Memory Syndrome),” Baltimore, December 9‐‐11, co‐sponsored by FMSF and John Hopkins Medical Institution.Google Scholar
Frye, Marilyn. 1983. A Note on Anger. Ii The politics of reality: Essays in feminist theory. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Eleanor and Farmer, Kevin. 1993. True stories of false memories. Baton Rouge, LA: Social Issues Resources Series.Google Scholar
Harrowitz, Nancy, and Hymans, Barbara. 1995. A Critical introduction to the history of Weininger reception. Ii Jews and gender: Responses to Otto Weininger, ed. Harrowitz, and Hymans, . Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Herman, Judith. 1992. Trauma and recovery. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Horn, Miriam. 1993. Memories lost and found. U.S. News and World Report, 29 November, 115(21): 52–63.Google Scholar
Laing, R. D. 1967. The politics of experience. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Le Rider, Jacques. 1993. Modernity and crises of identity: Culture and society in fin‐de‐siecle Vienna. Trans. Morris, Rosemary. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Locke, John. 17060-1959. An essay concerning human understanding. Ed. Frazer, Alexander Campbell. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Loftus, Elizabeth. 1993. The reality of repressed memories. American Psychologist, 38(5): 518–37.Google Scholar
Loftus, Elizabeth and Ketchum, Katherine. 1994. The myth of repressed memory: False memories and allegations of sexual abuse. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
McCluskey, Marsha T. 1994. Transforming victimization. Tikkun 9(2): 54–56.Google Scholar
Ofshe, Richard and Watters, Ethan. 1993. Making monsters. Society, March‐April, 4‐‐16.Google Scholar
Ofshe, Richard and Watters, Ethan. 1994. Making monsters: False memories, psychotherapy, and sexual hysteria. New York: Scribners.Google Scholar
Pendergast, Mark. 1995. Victims of memory: Incest accusations and shattered lives. Hinesburg, VT: Upper Access Press.Google Scholar
Rorty, Amélie. 1988. Persons and personae. Ii Mind in action. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Swindells, Julia. 1989. Liberating the subject? Autobiography and “women's history.” Ii Interpreting women's lives, ed. The Personal Narratives Group. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Tarvis, Carol. 1993. Beware the incest‐survivor machine. Montreal Gazette, 30 January, B1–2.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1991. The dialogical self. Ii The interpretive turn: Philosophy, science, culture, ed. Hiley, David R., Bohman, James F., and Shusterman, Richard. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Laurence. 1992-93. Moral deference. The Philosophical Forum 24(1‐‐3): 233–50.Google Scholar
Underwager, Ralph, and Wakefield, Hollinda. 1995. Return of the furies: An investigation into recovered memory therapy. Chicago: Open Court Press.Google Scholar
Vella, Susan M. 1994. False memory syndrome: Therapists are the targets in new sexual assault defence theory. National, Canadian Bar Association, January‐February, 36–39.Google Scholar
Weininger, Otto. 1906. Sex and character. London: William Heinemann. Authorized translation from the sixth German edition.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1973. Identity and individuation. Ii Problems of the self: Philosophical papers, 1956‐‐1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wollheim, Richard. 1980. On persons and their lives. Ii Explaining emotions, ed. Rorty, Amélie. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar