Disclosure imperatives and women's subjectivities in an emergent culture of sexual trauma testimony

Abstract

Since the democratization of the Maldives, a Sunni‐Islamic nation in the Indian Ocean, the Greater Male’ Region (GMR) has been the site of rapid social reform efforts. The state's democratizing efforts and local engagements with global feminist and mental health movements have led to the emergence of a culture of giving and bearing witness to sexual trauma testimony. I propose the term “disclosure imperatives,” and outline the three public discourses that produce this imperative in the Maldivian context. Next, drawing on interviews with Maldivian women who have experienced childhood sexual abuse, I illuminate how disclosure imperatives shape women's subjectivity and sociality. Using a critical phenomenological approach, I show that disclosure imperatives are, counterproductively, experienced as moralizing in interlocutors’ lifeworlds. Beyond focusing on women's “voice” or its absence as “silence,” the concept of disclosure imperatives illuminates the emotional and moral affects that cultures of disclosure engender in everyday lives.