Abstract

This article explores cultural narratives and imaginations on domestic abuse, and how they are contested in the present moment. With regard to popular discourse and recent memoirs, the aim is to analyze affective structures at play in cultural perceptions on abuse and the role of storytelling for shifting cultural perspectives of violence and intimacy, especially with regard to the cultural omnipresence of victim-blaming narratives. Drawing on the recent wave of autobiographical literature on intimate forms of abuse, such as Carmen Machado’s cross-genre memoir In the Dream House (2019) and Natasha Tretheway’s re-telling of her mother’s life and murder in Memorial Drive. A Daughter’s Memoir (2020), as well as on research in affect studies and feminist thought (Ahmed 2017), the article explores theories of dissent and defiance in the context of portrayals of abuse.