Telling, Re-Telling and Talking about Telling: Disclosure and/as Surviving Incest

Abstract

This essay has two intertwined goals. First, grounded in feminist standpoint theory, we advance the layered account (Ronai, 1995) as a method for representing experience that captures the current epistemological tension between commonality and difference in feminist scholarship. Then we present a layered account of the incest disclosure experience where we examine the disclosure forms of telling, re-telling, and talking about telling. This account challenges the boundaries between author and subject, private and public, personal and professional.