Born to abuse? Negotiating identity within an interpretative repertoire of impairment

Abstract

The focus here is on the constraints and possibilities afforded by the mediation of experience though semi-deterministic notions of the intergenerational transmission of abuse (the 'cycle of abuse' theory). A discourse analytic approach is adopted to accounts in which mothers identify themselves as having been abused in childhood. This identification is seen as inviting negative assumptions and inferences, among them the assumption that childhood abuse is associated with later abusive behaviour. The identity work occasioned by this, and the interpretative repertoires which ground participants' constructions of the general mechanisms through which abuse may be transmitted, are examined. The analysis explores some of the consequences of adopting particular explanatory frameworks for the credentialling of a fully autonomous adult identity. It is suggested that paying attention to this kind of identity work can increase our understanding of the constitutive power of discursive frameworks and the limits of individual resistance within them.