How The Presence of Palilogia In Chanel Miller’s Victim Impact Statement Works To Reveal The Processes of Somatophobia and the Displacement of Subjectivity

Chanel Miller’s Victim Impact Statement includes the use of descriptive language that describes the dehumanization and degradation that she experienced as a result of being sexually assaulted by Brock Turner. I argue that in this VIS, Miller periodically abandons the ideology of hope which many structures of power work to emphasize for the purpose of deemphasizing the horrors of rape. Instead, Miller adopts a logics of negativity which underscores the nefarious, necrotic nature of the abuse she experienced and multifariously deleterious impacts that the abuse had on her. This logics of negativity surfaces in many of Miller’s linguistic sequences, including repetition. There is at least one type of repetition that Miller’s language includes, and it is palilogia. Palilogia is a rhetorical strategy in which a word or phrases are repeated to convey meaning or express emphasis. (An example would be Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s repetition of the phrase “I have a dream” in his speech expressing discontent regarding the perpetuity of white supremacy in America.) The form of repetition conveyed through palilogia in Miller’s VIS statement conveys that the logics of negativity–as opposed to the logics of positivity or hopefulness–is integral to the tone and import of the text. Additionally, the logics of negativity made evident through the presence of palilogia in the VIS statement is categorically negative because it works to elucidate the onset of Miller’s somatophobia as well as the displacement of her subjectivity. Thus while Miller likely did not deploy this rhetorical strategy intentionally, its presence within the text is resonant and functions to reveal the depth and scope of the deleterious impact that rape can have on victim-survivors. 

Palilogia, the form of repetition which is also referred to as epizeuxis, is a rhetorical manifestation which transpires when there is an immediate, successive repetition of a word or phrase without words in between. In Chanel Miller’s Victim Impact Statement, palilogia manifests itself when she references how, following her sexual assault, the nurses in the hospital helped remove the pine needles from her hair. In narrating details from this part of her process, Miller states “To calm me down, they said it’s just the flora and fauna, flora and fauna” (1). Here, the repetition of the phrases “flora and fauna” function as a type of palilogia which highlights the aura of negativity in which Miller is inundated. The negativity is made evident through the “flora and fauna” palilogia sequence as it contrasts the necrotic, death-like state of Miller’s body to the organic, lively mode of being associated with the flora (plant life) and fauna (animals). Specifically, the positive logics of procreation and productivity associated with the existence and ongoingness of the living world is contrasted with the negative logics of a woman experiencing the devolution that results from the dehumanizing experience of sexual assault. Although the words “flora and fauna” are repeated, with this repetition potentially outweighing the negativity of somatic devolution by referencing aspects of the ecosystem associated with life, the repeating of the terms has the opposite effect; they underscore the reality that Miller has been subjected to the subordinating practice of rape, with this reality placing her in the submissive supine position which enabled the pine needles to make their way into her hair. In this context, then, the pine needles reemphasize the malevolence that Miller has been subjected to as well as the necrotic, deadly impact that the violent abuse has had on her. The deadly impact is highlighted at numerous points in the VIS, but becomes salient in context of the flora and fauna given that Miller is now in a hospital where strangers are moving their fingers through her hair to remove the pine needles which, although oftentimes associated with organicity and reproduction, come to be conflated with the inverse–devolution and death. 

The Victim Impact Statement’s inclusion of palilogia in detailing the negative import that rape has on Miller maintains a multifarious impact; in addition to elucidating the deadly devolution she experiences somatically (with this devolution being underscored by our awareness that her sexual assault transpired when she was reduced to the subordinating logics of a supine position conveying vulnerability), the presence of palilogia functions as a medium through which the subordinating rationale of somatophobia becomes evident. Following her enunciation of how the nurses remove the pine needles from her hair, Miller conveys the onset of her attempt to dissociate from her body. The dissonance she experiences towards her body becomes evident when she states 

“After a few hours of this, they let me shower. I stood there examining my body beneath the stream of water and decided, I don’t want my body anymore. I was terrified of it, I didn’t know what had been in it, if it had been contaminated, who had touched it. I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else”(1). 

Here, Miller conveys her detachment from her somatic form by indicating that she does not “want” her body anymore. In this context, the not “wanting” conveys that Miller’s desire for her physical form has diminished substantively. Additionally (and perhaps moreover), the system of relationality that exists between herself as thinking subject and herself as breathing body has devolved into the realm of psychic terror. Specifically, Miller is “terrified” of it, and this horror is likely akin to the power of horror Julia Kristeva articulates in elucidating her theory of abjection. Within this somatic signification, individuals undergo a psychic process of rejecting (expelling) entities, ideas, and objects which threaten the concept of fixed, meaningful boundaries that come to constitute the individual, her or his identity, and the social order which contains them. The rejection and revulsion is directed towards aspects of the sentient world which disturbingly defy the borders that are thought to exist between self and other, including feces, corpses, and any entity that challenges our consciousness of what is proper, pure, and perfect. A corpse, for example, defies borders by problematizing a conceptualization of self as living in a sentient body which allows for breath and movement. The corpse destabilizes the concept of self as sentient entity by bringing to consciousness that this self which the living being understands can and does eventually evolve into a nonsentient other which no longer possesses the capacity of self-understanding, thereby defying the borders that exist between the self and other (given that the same self represented by a living body is the same self that eventually exists within a dead one). But in this case, abjection transpires within a nuanced framework in which Miller is not experiencing disgust and horror towards her body as a thing that does not respect borders, but rather towards the body–her body–whose borders an other (Brock Turner) has not respected. 

As made evident by her use of palilogia in her VIS, sexual assault has a profoundly negative and multifarious impact on Chanel Miller. Specifically, the reality of sexual assault catalyzes the onset of somatophobia while also eroding Miller’s sense of subjectivity. These realities are encapsulated with a rhetorical strategy which gains its articulating power through repetition. Specifically, palilogia is a form of utterance which involves a concept or context being rearticulated for the purpose of ensuring that it is acknowledged and understood. Although multifariously impactful within the context in which it appears, palilogia’s most significant affect within the VIS statement is likely its ability to convey how the devolutionary work of sexual assault is such because it dissolves the self into a status of dissociation, detachment, and disintegration and is thus the process through which a sentient living entity experiences dehumanization.