Unconsciousness and Voice

Abstract

There are blind spots in Mrs. A.’s musings. One of these concerns her maid, who endured traumas Mrs. A. witnessed as a child. Sexual treachery and violence are undercurrents in the case, rising to the surface as matters of judgment and dismissal. While there is little that can be known definitively about the maid’s experience, there is ample material from medicine and law to situate her story. This material connects sexual violation to ruptured consciousness in the form of symptoms—fainting, catatonia, and muteness. It connects with Hindu mythic resources that appear in Mrs. A.’s case as a different kind of testimony than memory, in which women speak righteously about violation and fall unconscious in its wake. These suggest a counter-ethic at the limits of the ways consciousness might be a ground for ethical practice, in the limitations of Mrs. A.’s class consciousness and in the figuring of consciousness in medical histories beyond the case. Ahalya, an ambiguous heroine from epic and folk narrative who was cursed for being violated, is a quiet presence in Mrs. A.’s case. But alongside the maid and contemporary cases, she adds the counter-ethical possibility of unconsciousness as a state of ethical repair.