Phipps, Alison ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9476-6848 (2019) Experience. In: Goodman, Robin Truth, (ed.) The Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st-Century Feminist Theory. Bloomsbury, pp. 143-158

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Abstract

This chapter rethinks the role of experience in contemporary feminist politics, set in the context of the neoliberal commodification of first-person narratives. Building on existing analyses of what experience is in relation to the epistemological and political, it asks questions about what experience does. Through the examination of two key case studies, I argue that the appropriation of “survivor stories” and rhetorical use of distressing experiences by the powerful and privileged, often in collaboration with conservative agendas, turns them into a kind of “investment capital” in what Sara Ahmed terms “affective economies” (45), by mobilizing them to generate feeling and create political gain. In the process, structural dynamics are masked; the privileged are able to capitalize on the personal and deflect critique by marginalized groups whose realities are invisibilized or dismissed, even as they are spoken for. This also has a polarizing effect, which inhibits connections across differing experiences: indeed, we often participate in selective empathies where we discredit the realities of those who articulate opposing politics.

Item Type:	Book Section
Status:	Published
DOI:	10.5040/9781350032415.ch-009
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
School/Department:	School of Humanities
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/12629

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