Voices from the Line, by Laura Julier, might be one of the most important pieces we've read from this book so far. Detailing the theory and practice of the clothesline project, Julier summarizes a beautiful but horrifying project that raises awareness for violence against women. Unfortunately, many women in our country and across the globe face violence from men who believe they are in a position of power and that they're life and feelings are more valid than those of women. The clothesline project takes a stand against this thought process and violence and allows women to write and design shirts of their pleasing to be hung on the line in defense of the violence that was enacted against them.
The essay overviews different shirts and what they have written on them in a sort of composition theory type of way. Julier breaks the examples up into categories based on how the text is interacting with the author and the project as a whole. Through this categorization we learnt to understand the variety of healing methods that are possible through such a project like the clothesline. It's really inspiring and terrifying to read what has happened to some of these women, and their bravery in sharing their experience with the world, no matter what the device, is humbling.
I think what I'd like the class to focus on with this piece is the intersection of public and private that comes through the clothesline project. I think it's amazing that we can take such personal and traumatic moments and find power in them by unifying them physically. We know that if these women wrote about the violence that happened to them it would most likely have a healing effect, but what about the clothesline project takes this concept further? Does the visual and physical unification of these stories make them more powerful? Is more healing accomplished when we make our private traumas public and align them with similar texts?
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