Chelsea Swan

In Body work Melissa Febos explores how autobiographical writing can help one face regrets and trauma and extract meaning from the “pliable material” of memory. “In Praise of Navel Gazing” she affirms the importance of women airing their stories of abuse and thereby challenging the power structures that aim to keep victims silent. She argues that this can help women in reclaiming their own story, but that in doing so she, and you too, can be in service to others. She also claims that “Navel-gazing is not for the faint of heart. The risk of honest self-appraisal requires bravery. To place our flawed selves in the context of this magnificent, broken world is the opposite of narcissism, which is building a self-image that pleases you.” And in line with what Judith Butler says about us all being actors within the system and supporting the system Febos states “By convincing us to police our own and one another’s stories, they have enlisted us in the project of our own continued disempowerment.” She claims there is a resistance to this kind of writing about trauma as “to deny, discredit, and dismiss victims to avoid being implicated or losing power. Anyone who writes the story of their individual trauma, and especially those of identities that have been historically oppressed and abused, is subject to the traumatization by ongoing perpetrators: the patriarchal, white supremacist, colonizing nation(s) in which they must live and learn to heal.”