Embodiment of True Liberation: An Archive on Abuse, Memory, Trauma and the Self

I am writing this as a woman, a feminist in my own right, as a form of resistance, however subtle, will be subjected to the perspectives of the patriarch through a long deeply-embedded institutionalised oppression that still haunts all of us today, and so forth. I am aware of the preconceived notions made through the subconscious gender contextualisation of the everyday cis male culture that I will face as I write this out. (The fact that I even have to preface this is an example of oppression itself) In a world that seeks to marginalise and oppress, I stand firm in my beliefs, particularly through the works of feminist writers and poets: Stuart Hall, Alexander Chee, Carmen Maria Machado, Saidiya Hartman, and Audre Lorde, who have been supporting agents towards this path of feminist vulnerability, exploration, subjective truth and liberation. It was through discovering about them that brought my respect of autotheory writing to light. To me something artificial intelligence, or the future of technology could never replicate, and yet proves vital to the legacy progression of a better political and social structure—The subject of blending theoretical and philosophical inquiry with the irreplaceable and reverent self. To the upsets of basic replaceable academia writing, I am writing this not for you to agree with me, but merely for love, from the foundations of my undisciplined heart. 

All of us 

⇒ I am writing for the non-binary, women, men, people of colour, abuse victims who have carried or still carries fear, through cis-societal structures and stigmas, who have been silenced due to marginalisation and oppression withheld by patriarchal institutions. 

Before I begin, I want to start off by prefacing once again that I am liberated. I am healed. This isn’t a feminist reassurance I tell in the mirror. It is a psychological fact, or maybe you 

would deny it. Looking at the state of my life right now, I am assured of this. It does not come easy to completely rid of one’s initial values—to unlearn and relearn, to unlisten and then reanalyse certain values of morality when all your faith and belief was pinned onto a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a phantom of psychological manipulation. It took real reflection—three hundred and thirty-nine days of singlehood, country escapes, re-stupefying myself into not making a big deal out of it; because if I did, I would be seen as weak, re-imagining my body as if it were different, or this lived experience I encountered did not exist at all, trying to figure out and also doing, what I thought was how to heal, or in other words, rise above this whole myriad of embarrassment. I tried almost every way possible: read, think, reflect, post, indulge, beautify, converse, to mentally rid this phase of my life, to put it beneath me—by forgetting, demeaning, escaping, “living”. When in actual fact, the way to truly put it beneath oneself, was to face it. To own it. To understand it. To let it be a part of your living archival embodiment. The way I was truly liberated from my own demons—my preconceived, self-inflicted thoughts of myself since being a victim of abuse was when I decided I was going to love it. 

I remember the day I was free from seven hundred and thirty days of abuse. It was on a Saturday evening, the 1st of July back in 2023—I received a text message that changed everything. I was in my dimly-lit room, applying makeup to go to a jazz bar—for my upcoming date with him. “Oh,” I thought, my demeanour steady, assured. I nodded, pretending I was in one bit shocked when in fact, it was the latter. A sea of realisation washed over me, I could feel the weight of my stress pressing down on my head, and then my chest, arms, stomach, so on, so forth. And yet, I felt surprisingly numb, as if I was obliged to continue going about on my date with him—an imaginary vessel that haunted my very muscles to continue with the norm: sticking through with what was as planned, with what was the usual. I applied my makeup and left, making my way to meet the devil. 

Looking back on the present while reflecting on the past, I realised how my body carried an archive of a multitude of lived experiences, and that it was not only a vessel, but a repository, haunting me until this very day. Cultural theorist Stuart Hall, in the exploration of the “Living Archive”, describes the living archive as an incomplete fantasy. As work is produced, one is always contributing and constantly extending the limits of that to which one is contributing. Our present practice adds to it immediately, and our new interpretations inflect it differently. This is where I acknowledge my abuse: at the constant interconnectedness of memory, being and theory—not just an archival memory, but a living archive of morality injected with the present: my zine about overcoming the abuse, my procession towards proper boundary-making after long-term manipulation and the maturity, character growth that comes from it. My unfaltering drive to maintain my childlike demeanour and loving nature despite it, all subjected to my own bell curve, only for me to judge. My body, marked with hidden scars, holds the residue of the events during my time with my abuser. Feminist essayist Carmen Machado’s text in her autotheory In the Dream House, supports this. She explains that the memory of a relationship will live in every part of one’s body, where one will question every twitch, knot of the muscle, every moment of pain. In thinking this through, I turn to writer Alexander Chee, in his exploration ‘On Becoming an American Writer’ in his novel How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. He explains that if one is gripped with despair, speak to their dead. Write for their dead. Tell them a story. Let the dead self hold one accountable. Let them make one bolder and more modest or louder or more loving, whatever it is, but ask them in, listen, and then write. It is only from there and then, I got to face true liberation—an encounter with my dead self, my abused self; when I placed it right across my present being, right in front of my face and said: 

I see you 

You exist 

You are crucial 

I need you 

I am unashamed of you 

In fact, 

I love you and I am proud of you 

A little over a year ago, I experienced a disturbance—a moment where my sense of self diminished for a slight second. It was not brief, but rather an accumulation of small violences, each one subtly but surely rupturing my sense of ownership over my healing: 

It’s too embarrassing, pretend it didn’t happen. 

Posting about your healing will only result in people seeing you as a weakling. 

You need to rise above. 

Recognising victimhood is difficult. To say, “I was abused, hurt and heartbroken,” by someone that does not deserve it is to make real something I have spent years of my childhood trying to dissolve into silence. And yet, I am learning that silence, too, is a performance. To unlearn is to engage in a practice of radical re-authorship. In Lorde’s essay Uses of the Erotic, Lorde states that reclaiming the erotic is an act of resistance, a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. Misnamed by men and used against women, it has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic. But the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force. I think of this as I trace my fingers over my hidden scars, I allow my body to embrace agency over shame. To reframe my narrative is to assert that my history, my abuse, my word, my ownership of healing is not simply one of rupture, but true reclamation. 

Autotheory, then, is more than a methodology—to me, it is a survival strategy, one that leads to pure livelihood. It reclaims the self, it allows me to decipher, come to terms with, acknowledge and respect my past decisions, through theorising and the idea of relatability, knowledge—I am able to come to terms with my prior entanglements; in order to channel true inner peace and liberation. It builds a sense of empathy towards my past self, a devotion not to berate, tease or hate, but to understand and accept. Shortly after my escape, a friend of mine whom I had a conversation with back then told me, what I did back then, the decisions I made for myself and for others, was merely and simply the best that I could do, with what I had, during that time, and why I did. And that itself, was enough. What was once I, whom I had thought was the best thing to do at the time, was enough. And that version of myself, that “weak” self, who continuously stayed through years of torment, was still one worthy of love and embrace. It is here, in this space of textual and physical excavation, through those ruptures, that I begin to understand the self as not an archive of abuse and trauma, but also a present living archive of resilience, of becoming. 

And with that, I accept a metronome of uncertainty, of universal ease and fluidity. Audre Lorde addresses the theme of silence in her essay The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, which became one of the reasons for her most enduring legacies. She emphasises the importance of speaking out against injustices, and that remaining silent does not protect one from harm—but paves a way for injustices to continue. A form of colonial tactic, it is second nature for systems of oppression to create cultural and social hierarchy, encouraging silence amongst marginalised communities. Language is a political demand—a form of solidarity. In order to create collective liberation and diminish social stigmas created by patriarchal institutions, one has to step forth and voice truth. 

On that day at the jazz bar, I took photos of my experience—the interior design, the ambience, the dimly-lit candle lights, the paintings hung on red carpeted walls, and burgundy leather couches. To tell the truth, I still did not know that that was it. Was today going to finally be my escape from 2 years of abuse? I knew for sure it was going to be a significant point in my life regardless of the outcome. But to be frank, I was still subtly caught up with the cycle of numbness. Everything happened in a trance; I was still processing it all and I was definitely still in love. But I could sense, something in me was different. My body felt exposed, cold, scrutinised, subjected to a set of humiliating ruptures all at once—unusual from what I was used to: subtle ruptures of humiliation every now and then. The vessel in me was still shaken, a shivering cold flame. But it was no longer the colour of light amber, it was opaque, hot cerulean. It felt quite orgasmic; a state of trance, a procession of nerves trembling, and the soul listening. Unlike the climax, it is a revelation—a deep burning cerulean force, the vessel was no longer leading me to concede—instead, I was split open into light. I was weak, but I was finally alive. It was my final raw exhale, sacred and fierce. It was not only a state of escape but arrival, no shame to be found. That place that housed the end was the beginning. I was finally free. 

My engagement with autotheory—reading different excerpts from esteemed writers, people of colour, learning, engaging in thought-provoking seminars with lecturers and classmates has brought out a new set of personal archives, new perspectives, further accumulated from past living archives that embodies the self. I was already at peace, but now I am empowered. I am interconnected. I am a collective being, inspired by those that come before. Before that I did my zine about my abusive relationship, and went on multiple talks on overcoming abuse, but they all just came from my own. Autotheory gave me not only self-reliance, but also embodiment and relatability through research, with a tinge of interdisciplinary critical practice. 

Glossary 

Orgasmic 

⇒ A crescendo of becoming, the body embodies a state of enlightenment. A pure force riddled to be impure by sexist institutions but a mere state of human catharsis; a part of one’s natural becoming; a sudden efflorescence of sensation, anticipation, a riot of feeling. A representation of fleeting freedom, pure and unadulterated elation. Like the bloom of a damask rose, a ballerina abandoning the rhythm and losing herself, an ecstatic peak, however so exquisitely powerless, and yet the afterglow depicts transcendence—a visceral, secret sanctuary embedded into a woman’s soul. She is a ghost of pleasure, naturality haunting the present being, and becoming. 

Bibliography 

Chee, A. (2018) How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays. U.K. edn. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. On Becoming an American Writer. 

Hall, S. (2001) Constituting an Archive. 3rd text. London: Taylor & Francis. Issue 54, Volume 15, p. 91-92. 

Lorde, A. (1984) Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. U.S. edn. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power. 

Lorde, A. (1984) Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. U.S. edn. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action. 

Machado, C. (2019) In the Dream House: A Memoir. U.S. edn. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press. Graywolf Press Nonfiction, p. 264.