Invisible cuts

Psychological violence is a complex phenomenon that often goes unrecognized. Nonetheless, its effects can seriously impact one’s functioning, including understanding one’s personhood within a given culture, interacting with society, and expressing oneself within its bounds. This stems from the fact that psychological violence, in both its occurrence and its effects, is inextricably linked with meaning-making processes, interpreting the world, and responding to it. Due to its vague definition, the experience of psychological violence is vulnerable to hermeneutical injustice, which, as Miranda Fricker explains, is the effect of a gap in collective interpretative resources and the resulting disadvantage in making sense of one’s reality. Considering culture’s significant impact on conceptualizing psychological violence, this article focuses on its representations in two contemporary sf films, which will be studied for their contribution to hermeneutical (in)justice: Tau (2018) and Upstream Color (2013). The first part delineates the term’s general meaning and how it is applied to this analysis. The second part explores the transmutations of personhood induced by psychological violence in Tau, along with the dialectic between the cultural code of agency and the position of the “victim.” In the third part, the dynamic of psychological violence is recognized as the main driving force for the narrative in Upstream Color, a movie that is interpreted as a spectacle of the woman’s psychological degradation. Finally, the article reflects upon how engaging with these films can either raise or degrade our competence in dealing with the violation of human psyche.