ABSTRACT
Feminist narratives of father-daughter incest have conventionally anchored their politics in three tropes: helplessness, which attests to the child’s innocence; damage, which identifi es incest’s wrong; and recovery, which redresses personal victimhood while offering a parable for cultural transformation. These texts are, moreover, testimonial: both plot and politics cohere out of the ethical imperatives of bearing witness. Refl ecting the premise of the speak outs from which they evolved, the incest memoirs of second-wave feminism address themselves to a supportive audience, interpellating a readership who will respond to the victim’s wavering narrative of suffering with empathy, encouragement, and action. The conventional address insists that readers recognize the victim’s innocence despite her self-doubt, grieve her wounds when she denies them, be sure of her fi nal transcendent recovery even as she succumbs to despair. And indeed, by following the models laid down by the friends, therapists, and support group members who populate these accounts-and by taking note of the subtitles, jacket copy, and the material reality of a published “recovery story”— readers can be steadfast where the damaged narrator cannot. The textual assertion of helplessness solicits agency: it is the sentimental mechanism by which these memoirs construct the very audience they address. Submitting themselves (ourselves) to the demands of this intimate address, taking on
the assigned tasks, readers become a responsive feminist public, poised to listen, respond, and act.
