After completing the articles, I sat staring angrily at my wall. I
couldn’t shake the waves swelling in my chest every time I thought of the
violations of K*. Not just because of the rapes that she endured, but also
because the violations that came from Mac McClelland’s reporting. One important
aspect of knowledge production is ethical agency and an aspect of this is the
risks that come with the misappropriation of the experiences of others
(Fernandes, 129). Those risks are manifested in flat, misconstrued views of
peoples and places that can have ramifications both publically and privately
for those involved. In many ways, McClelland’s depiction of Haiti and the
misappropriation of K*’s story falls neatly into the legacy of neoliberal
constructions of female bodies of color and of Haiti as well as the use of
these bodies and stories for personal gain.
McClelland’s piece (written with the cheap articulation of a tabloid) is
riddled with misrepresentations of Haiti, such as the description of how
‘American sunshine’ could not dispel the horrors she had experienced due to
Haiti, a country in ‘ugly chaos’. This serves to perpetuate long held opinions
of a hierarchy between those within Western ‘civilizations’ and the ‘others’. As
she talks about working through the trauma she experienced throughout her
reporting career, McClelland expresses a desire to regain the control that she
feels she has lost. But what about K*? Does she not deserve her own sense of
control? Should she not at least have control over who knows about her experiences
and how this knowledge is dispersed? These experiences that she will carry with
her for a lifetime should at least be her own to tell. The violation of K* came
again through the pen of McClelland and this exploitive use of another woman’s
story for personal gain.
Where McClelland’s article was a dehumanization of Haitians, Danticat’s
response was the humanization of the victimized. Each sentence materialized a
richer, fuller woman and Haiti that is missing from McClelland’s reporting.
Danticat, like Ulysse, strives to return the narrative of Haiti to the truth and
this accountability to what she is creating knowledge around is seen through
her constructions of K*. In an email to Danticant, K* says: “I want victims
in Haiti to know that they can be strong and stand up for their rights and have
a voice. Our choices about when and how our story is told must be
respected."
Oftentimes
the rights of sexual assault victims are stripped away and in the case of K*,
these rights to her own story were construed for the gain of another. This is a
violation in and of itself that needs to be addressed within the process of
producing knowledge, not just within fast media outlets, but also within
academia.
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