Prudence Hemming
Museum of the Cenotaph | Number 3, 2043
Abstract
In the Theorem of the Cenotaph, Dr A. Wunderlich delves into the cultural practices that serve to silence the prevalence of sexual violence against women and children in the Antipodean regions from 1900 to the present. Shedding light on the symbolic practices designed to perpetuate sexual violence by eradicating the voices of women and children, this long-awaited theory reverses the neurological trauma-induced survival response, which typically shuts down, numbs, fawns, or plays dead in response to horrifying events.
Keywords
Cenotaph, the presence of silence, veneration, patriarchy in public spaces, everyday life/sexual violence
Concept
This article discusses the archival discovery of less-than-exceptional cases of sexual violence identified in the Antipodean region, 34.92850 S, 138.60070 E. In 2043, Dr A. Wunderlich and her team reported their findings to the journal, Museum of the Cenotaph. Archaeological remains of family archives were routinely destroyed in the early twenty-first century when victims of systemic violence, primarily women and children, as well as the adult survivors of such familial abuse, were robbed of a future life. In these cases, the victims either died before their time, were reported missing, or were interred in asylums for what was then termed the ‘insane.’
Secrecy and Eradication
Archival material is scarce due to a ritualised practice enacted by the social systems surrounding perpetrators of violence to avoid criminal charges being laid. Denial in the region was promulgated throughout the social echelons. The victims cannot be listed. Throughout history, they have remained nameless. Their role as wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, servants, and employees depended on their obedience to this secrecy, which grew in direct proportion to the tide of male sexual violence that swept across society from the founding of the Antipodean settlement to the present day. Starting in the 1860s, iconic gathering places established in the name of privilege, religion, and prestige enabled perpetrators of these acts to infiltrate families using status to mask their criminal intent. In this way, the crimes were hidden from the families whose children and relatives were abused.
Camouflaged by collective denial, the lived experience of survivors is abandoned and bound up in shame. Survivors themselves often do not have the words to report how their bodies have been violated. Over time, they continue to be powerless to resist this pervasive evasion, which destroys any possibility of giving testimony. Having suffered a loss of voice, the victim-survivor is rendered speechless. By examining the impacts of this silencing, this study demonstrates how these ruptures in memory take on a form of self-forgetting, perpetuating an endless loss of the self. In the end, the subject disappears.
The word theorem is derived from the Greek θεωρέω, meaning that which can be considered, looked at, or examined. A theorem, then, by its very nature, confronts us with a paradox. The field of our enquiry is not a privileged site of investigation. When perpetrators are protected, the law and justice mechanisms are occluded. Dead or alive, victims of sexual violence stay unseen, and the effects of violence eradicate their access to words. The stories of these women have dropped out of time. Without language, they are deprived of air. Their existence has now been discovered inside an empty tomb. The victim’s body has been replaced by emptiness.
The Theorem of the Cenotaph examines the tomb as both the concrete and symbolic site of sexual violence. The empty tomb is devoid of circumstantial witnesses who could give words to the crimes inflicted on young women, mothers, and children across all levels of society. Through her painstaking work, Dr Wunderlich and her team have detected the signs and resonances capable of transmitting the past as it progresses into the future. The Cenotaph gives material expression to a form of social contagion promulgated and used to cover up the identity of male criminals. In doing so, a history of unremitting sexual violence took place across society, inflicted on women and children in plain sight. Driving the social blindness was an elaborate system of patriarchal privilege that perpetuated the collective silencing of victims and the protection of perpetrators in their midst.
Psychic and Bodily Injury
Today, modern science understands the extent of neurological damage and functional impairment that mirrors the emotional injuries sustained by victims. This includes damage to the functional brain-based capacities of victims, inhibiting their expression of narrative and truth-telling. Reliving past events can fragment the ability to recall or construct a narrative when giving testimony. The amount of effort to remember or seek justice was and remains questionable when, in most cases, there is no one to listen to victims in the first place. Fragmentary recall of events is seen as inconclusive, while at the same time, the victim feels a powerful reluctance to re-experience the painful intrusions. The story stays frozen in a kind of afterlife state.
If the Theorem of the Cenotaph highlights the force of collective amnesia promoted by powerful enclaves and institutions across Adelaide, it also examines the reassembly of decomposing memory. The arduous task of scraping away the dust to identify the victims highlights the impact of naming the unnamable. It is not only the past that this research unearths, but also the actual effect carried on into the future. The impact of injury to the vulnerable body paves the way for lingering memories to enter the lives of future generations.
Most marked is the way the traumatic handover is compounded across successive generations when ongoing silencing and burial practices corrupt the original traces of violence. Wunderlich’s research highlights the insidious impact of retrograde sexual violence transmission. These terrifying forms interject through repetition into the lives of successive generations. Their reoccurrence stems from burying the truth. Over time, the human body becomes a burial site, a place of inexpressible horror that eludes human understanding.
This recent archival history of four generations of women is the first to be salvaged in the Antipodean area. The rare example was discovered through a series of accidents. The scarcity of found evidence highlights the challenges faced by researchers excavating human and non-human remains of localised sexual violence where social practices operated to shut down the victim’s testimony during their lifetime.
The research also faced the existential problem of requiring help to extract traumatic testimony or memory traces in circumstances where authenticity was challenging to prove or which, due to decomposition, was problematic. Neither the remnants of testimony nor the remains can ever grasp or bear witness to the ‘completeness’ of the original experience. Because memory is channelled through minds and structures containing the bias and perception of people, atmospheres, and events external to the event, the distinction between memory and testimony becomes blurred. At best, only a mediated imagined form can be imparted in the present if the testimony is unspoken.
At the time of this report, Wunderlich’s team were constantly pressured to respond to requests for the extraction of data from exhumed remains of human and non-human remains. Scientists are typically used to working in pristine spaces, removed from high levels of ambiguity or the troublesome burden of being affected by other people’s bodies, feelings, and memories. Suddenly, there was a need to find a method of uncovering the hidden victims and their stories. Wunderlich and her team were forced to postpone the demands for binary approaches to human extraction in the field. Instead, they proceeded to turn the usual research methods upside down. This was not straightforward. It was disconcerting. A highly personal aura came into the research room, and the fragmentation of findings across generations filled the air with despair.
The team began seeing and hearing voices from different times and places. Their experience was always folding and unfolding like a skein of wool moving around the spindle. “Now, you see it; now, you don’t.” They report wondering how memory could speak from the past into the present and if their perspectives were changed by the day and time of their coming to life. How could memory be revived when it bears no relation to the listener? All these questions began to occupy their minds. Above all, what resonance field allows these buried texts and objects to be transmitted by words into human feelings? How breathlessly the manuscript pages spoke, catching the researchers spellbound.
Was amnesia being unlocked through the team's deciphering methods? Rumours suggest that another person, whose identity is yet unknown, may have been involved in discovering the archival remains. There was speculation that someone in the museum might have had a personal connection to the victims. Alarmed by the fear that the lost lives could once again vanish, the team acted quickly, carefully preserving the pages of documents and artefacts.
The new research required a different context upon which to rest the team’s hypothesis. Hence, The Theorem of the Cenotaph is based on the contagious disease first researched and described by the neuroscientist and philosopher, Catherine Malabou. She refers to the life-threatening impacts of catastrophic and overwhelming events capable of reducing the survivor to one of the ‘living dead.’ The expression, living dead, is a form of destructive plasticity, suggesting that the self can disappear and be replaced by a new form unrecognisable to themselves and society. The research by Dr Wunderlich on this collection confirms that four generations were eradicated in this way, with family members known to be survivors in the present.
From these remains, the story has been unearthed. That which was already dead is found. Also found is the contagious condition, which operates like a pathogenetic plague, severely compromising the victim’s immunological system to fight off the invading pathogen. In the case of catastrophic violence with no preparation for defence or personal survival, the victim becomes overwhelmed and, once stepping out from the event, experiences a complete shutdown of the emotional system. Their former identity and relationships with the social group are shattered. The false self, a frozen defence system, takes over the personal life—the ability to give voice to the violence is taken away.
The ‘living death’ of the cenotaph continues to be transmitted through the power and status of social institutions and systems surrounding the victim. Within the hierarchy of power, attachment to a primitive form of domination entitles members of systems and groups to be contained within the protective power accorded to the group by the surrounding social class and systems. Often, family structures fail to protect their children or other relatives, and without legal and policing protection, a victim cannot report a crime. Without social exposure and punishment, perpetrators will likely be celebrated in workplaces, institutions, and other public memorialisation venues.
The Cenotaph’s empty tomb also refers to the systemic eradication of the victims, as each successive generation has hidden its contents, preserving the archive by continuing to live in shameful silence. The Wunderlich researchers only recognised this when they encountered the emotionally charged content. They realised that the shamed memories were repeated time and again as if it were the first time for each woman across each successive generation. Tragically, the losses could only be extracted because the horrifying effects of this repetition had preserved them. Repetition in each lifetime was the very means of embalming, an uncanny form of mummification.
Unearthing lost remains
In the neuroscience of destructive plasticity, the ability of the human and nonhuman brain to explode into a new form or to sculpt and shape another character inside the victim host gives rise to other forms of communication both inside and outside time.
After death, victims of sexual violence leave behind a trail of everyday clues and objects, vessels, and trinkets resembling the domestic luggage the Egyptians packed in the tombs for the mummies of the dead, the vital things they needed in the afterlife. Likewise, researchers discovered an archive of leftover remains and everyday objects dating back to 1900; an odd assortment of written notes left inside cake tins, on the back of holy cards and shopping lists, on the backs of photos with dog-eared corners; nothing of any value, or so it seemed.
It felt as if silence was speaking without words. We entered a different world. Peering behind their haloed faces and squinting into the sun, we interpreted their faraway looks. In the background, looming figures faded out of view. The diary entry and the discarded letter revealed nothing we needed to know. Each generation passed on to the next. Taking turns, no woman or child ever breathed a word. Yet, their story has been gathering mass until it feels heavy, unable to move or die.
- The Museum of the Cenotaph, 2043
The weight of silence is unbearable, but paradoxically, the accompanying psychological effects of survival are internalised as emptiness. This segmented by-product of amnesia from denial can be measured in the residual harm of neurological plasticity. The unearthing of the lost archive was an awe-inspiring event, similar to discovering an ancient tomb. As the researchers carefully removed each domestic and personal item from its resting place, it was clear that this was no ordinary excavation. Each piece in the collection was treated with the utmost care as if it were an ancient relic imbued with the power to transmit a message. When the time came to unearth each relic, the team were often speechless.
As the collection was slowly catalogued, it became clear that the find was a testament to grief and loss. The objects in the collection were more than personal items; they were a window into oblivion, made possible by the research, which allowed the team to make direct contact with the victims. This was a world previously unknown to the broader society. Dr Wunderlich recalls:
It was hard not to feel somehow implicated that these survivors had been ignored. It was hard not to feel angry that we, ourselves, and our descendants had for so long closed our eyes to what had happened. In fact, the collection and findings were a monument in our minds, the true cenotaph. This was domestic confinement lived down through generations of women, children, and families. We wondered why we should encounter such a rare find and why all the usual efforts to keep the evidence hidden had failed.
The unearthing or retrieval, to use the proper term, was the same as our work in other areas following other human catastrophes. We are used to being sent to investigate the remains of human life after it has been extinguished, but this became, for us, more deeply personal. The veil usually protects us while working so that we don’t become overwhelmed by the sights and the senses we encounter. In this case, this form of protection was not available. It was as if we were also implicated in what had happened to these survivors.
We all felt this simultaneously. There was no need for discussion. It was a deep-body experience. Only later did we realise that it had happened to each of us. We felt connected to the dead, who were with us in spirit. Some of the team reported seeing the faces and the figures of the women and children who had been killed. Gradually, we understood the significance of these remains. At that stage, we did not know the exact nature of the catastrophe. Still, we were aware that we were witnessing the unspoken effects of a violent intrusion that had disrupted the daily lives of the families in the archive.
The researchers were trained professionals equipped to handle the excavation with necessary sensitivity and care. That said, the quarrying did summon unexpected visions in their minds. As they uncovered each physical artefact, they were transported back in time, imagining what life must have been like for the victims of these events. They were reminded of the power of the past to shape our present and future. Rather than being inspired to continue their work in archaeology and social justice, they were numbed and repelled by their contact with an experience they considered evil.
At this stage, Dr Wunderlich reported that the team was baffled. Like the victims, none of them were prepared for the experience. They knew that the unearthing of explicit cover-ups always involved an outsider who was an unseen accomplice in the undertaking. They all believed someone or some group outside of our circle had made the conditions right for the discovery to be made at this moment in time. She says that they discussed this for a long time before an answer surfaced.
The unearthing and retrieval were the same used to exhume the remains of the dead in other human catastrophes. In this case, the protective veil used to keep the team from being overwhelmed by the visceral impact of touching and sensing the material formations failed. Wunderlich and the team reported feeling as if they were also implicated in what had happened to these survivors. In other words, no protection could be used to counter this bombarding from the remains; it was like radioactive material entering their bodies.
Damage across time
Damage due to time, exposure to sunlight, temperature and other infestations was observed on all paper objects. For example, the yellowing of writing papers, journals, letters, envelopes, and certificates reminded us of events past. Damage to the plastic surface of photographs made some images unclear until they were re-rendered in new coatings. The dead insect casings, larvae, and other dust particles containing seed DNA from the gardens and environs where the women lived were well preserved. The most common sources of corruption were fly pupae in the wrappings, weevils, rodent teeth, and chew marks.
Arriving from the past into a future where sexual violence is no longer condoned, the team was affected by the visceral impact the signs of decay had on their bodies.
It was a lot to process. In these states, mixed with disgust and sympathy, we were close to the deceased. Who would not be moved to see sacred medals, photographs, and papers nestled into folded arms or held in clenched hands?
As the researchers unearthed each item, they reported feeling a sense of awe. At the same time, undulating waves of sadness washed over them. Dr Wunderlich adds that the excavation summoned unexpected visions in their minds:
As we uncovered each remnant, we were transported back in time, imagining what life must have been like for those obliterated by a society that condoned such harm and destruction.
Dr Wunderlich's current work flips the idea of time on its head. Like most Western scientists, she privileged the concept of synchronous time with the past, present, and future neatly divided, each boundary space keeping the past and the future from flowing into each other. She wondered if the resonances picked up from the archival remains could be happening simultaneously. She hypothesised whether the team could capture the transmissions of emotions from the past because they had located similar experiences within their shared lives. This made time asynchronous, capable of being simultaneously experienced if a collective emotional register could be harnessed to create sensory and affective connections.
We knew that the unearthing of explicit cover-ups always involved an outsider who was an unseen accomplice in the undertaking. We all believed someone or some group outside of our circle had made the conditions right for the discovery to be made at this moment in time. Also, the variety of microscopic debris in the folds of the material was surprising and unexpected. Handwritten annotations on paper, infestations such as ancient insect casings, wormhole infestations in wood, newspaper clippings, and tunnelling holes from termites in coffin wood made for a moving experience. A strand of red hair coiled around a tortoiseshell comb made us cry. It was as if this was happening to us, in our bodies, although from their point of view, we came from a distant future.
Neuronal coding impacts
Scanning and reading fragments and letters, Wunderlich uncovered receipts, dockets, notes, telegrams, and other family belongings. She reported it was beyond words, like seeing a reflection in a shard of a broken mirror. Her research notes state that the chaotic sight reminded her of the brain changing its functions in response to trauma:
When a person experiences an overwhelming catastrophic event, their brain is reshaped, and a radical identity suddenly emerges. They may feel like they are no longer themselves and struggle to relate to the world around them. Uncovering the hidden texts allowed us to listen and attune to their stories for the first time in history. This is momentous.
Wunderlich transcribes the neuronal patterning in vocalised transmissions and sound vibrations from texts, objects, walls, and rooms where the remains are housed. Her findings on scanned results show the limits of epigenesis when all memory reverses into the past at the moment of a catastrophe, and retro-genesis is expressed dominant. The impact on various unregistered texts and objects is coded for corruption. Outside sounds, smells, and stirrings in the air cause the words and objects to merge and fill the space, even if no one can receive them.
The impact on Wunderlich’s body had similar effects to that experienced by the victims. The corruption caused by close contact with the remains is discussed in a forthcoming article where Wunderlich describes her neurological response over the decade she worked on the project.
Finally, the Museum of the Cenotaph collection illustrates new developments in our understanding of neurological and affective bodily plasticity. Dr Wunderlich's careful unearthing makes room for new interpretations of the past. This approach reflects the idea of plasticity to reshape and reimagine our understanding of human survival in violent and predatory societal practices:
I witnessed the extent of destructive plasticity on unprepared victims. It may occur suddenly due to human-made or natural causes, or it may accumulate over time, resulting from repeated exposure to violence in circles where safety and belonging were expected but not provided. For the generational archive to be unearthed, a survivor from the family line, once one of the ‘living dead,’ must break through this denial to speak or seek assistance in confronting their family's history. Once severed and released, this broken line begins to unearth lost stories. In the future, the reshaping of neurological functioning can begin. Without a destructive explosion and no impending void awaiting the survivor’s fall, an alternative expression capable of feeling in the face of psychic horror is given a chance. It is not a new voice but one derived from an old genetic code that started to grow. Rather than remaining dead to the world of the past, the survivor crafts a living story of loss. Someone must be present and ready to give the survivor breath. The speaker, the listener, the reader, and the story need each other. It is not too much to ask to be freed from the tyranny of silence.
Afterword
Just as the Theorem of the Cenotaph uses empty tombs to symbolise the eradication of memory, this exhumation reverses this destruction and brings survivor storytelling to life. Before their release from the past, the women and their descendants could not be called survivors. They had lived, but their experience of life was radically altered. They were reduced to experiencing life outside themselves. They had never felt truly at home in their skin. Formerly trapped in the afterlife, these lives can now be understood.
This work demonstrates how human and non-human voices are transmitted across time. Silence no longer eradicates the past, and our future is not diminished. There is more to see and hear. As yet, we are still going.