Abstract
Leigh Gilmore’s Tainted Witness analyzes the evolving genre of testimonial, in which people share narratives with others from whom they demand acknowledgment or redress. Gilmore’s chronological tableau includes Anita Hill’s testimony during Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination hearings; the testimony of and documentary films about Rigoberta Menchu; mediated testimonies of victimized non-Western girls such as those portrayed in Nikolas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s Half the Sky; Naffisatou Diallo’s criminal and civil complaints against Dominique Strauss-Kahn; Jamaica Kincaid’s autobiographical fiction; and #BlackLivesMatter activism. The book is engaging and, for feminists interested in sustaining and increasing the power and resilience of women’s voices, often feels like a roller-coaster ride. That is because testimonial narratives are “produced strategically, can be taken up capriciously, are sometimes persuasive but subject to doubt and discrediting, and do the work of permitting persons to pass through checkpoints of many kinds” (p. 141).
Drawing on representational feminist theory, Gilmore traces recurring patterns. Women—particularly women who are marginalized because they are also people of color, immigrants, and/or gender-nonconforming individuals—provide testimonials from a position of already having been discredited. Since new forms of expression are often required to express previously unheard forms of oppression, women’s testimony may be invalidated as running afoul of procedural rules, particularly in structured venues such as courtrooms or committee hearings. Such practices of official invalidation are neither neutral nor apolitical but part of a systematic and historical silencing.
The tribulations of women who give testimony while risking great personal harm beg the question of why (some) women take up narrative. Women who testify are driven by a sense of mission. Anita Hill, who did not act upon her alleged harassment when it occurred due to her own personal fear and professional vulnerability, came forward when the societal stakes became high. Hill’s example also shows how truth, doubt, and privilege operate. Gilmore points out that Hill’s testimony resonated with many women who have experienced harassment and similarly protected themselves by remaining silent, an experience that the majority of white male legislators could not imagine and, thus, found not credible. Girls and women of color sometimes become credible when (re)presented by white men (and sometimes by white women) who tell their stories and frame our requested responses through acts of rescue. It is a sad irony that, for some feminists and progressives, shopping for goods made by former sex workers in countries far away is more palatable than working to change the institutions that created the conditions from which marginalized people purportedly require rescue.
Gilmore describes not only a genealogy of oppression but a genealogy of resistance and creativity. Power does not yield; as women seek new forms of resistance, they are met with new forms of opposition. People who offer testimonials continue to seek audiences who will bear witness, often in more receptive venues or new forms. Decades after her first testimonial was denied, Menchu and her allies bore witness to her narrative by using documentary film; Diallo found redress in a Bronx civil trial when the Manhattan district attorney dropped criminal charges against Strauss-Kahn. The genre of fiction is mobilized by Jamaica Kincaid to tell her truth, even as the genre of memoir has often become coopted by neoliberal bootstrappers. Bree Newsome does not wait for the South Carolina legislature to remove the Confederate flag but climbs the flagpole herself to pull it down in a highly publicized act of civil disobedience. Gilmore describes how doubt “sticks” to groups whose experiences and identities are marginalized. She also shows that people’s truth and their need to share it are, fortunately, also “sticky,” providing powerful symbolism for future generations.
This book will be of interest to those studying media, social work, women and gender studies, sociology, history, and political science. Its detailed examples are compelling although it would have been helpful for the author to have included more explication of the theories that are referred to in her text since those theories may be challenging for students in general survey courses. Pairing the book with media coverage of contemporary examples (e.g., the #Me Too movement, the 2018 Supreme court nomination hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, and Bill Cosby’s sentencing) will help students integrate the conceptual arguments and explore ever-evolving forms of testimonial, doubt, and resistance.
