Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives
The essays in this volume discuss narrative strategies employed by international writers when dealing with rape and sexual violence, whether in fiction, poetry, memoir, or drama. In developing these new feminist readings of rape narratives, the contributors aim to incorporate arguments about trauma and resistance in order to establish new dimensions of healing. This book makes a vital contribution to the fields of literary studies and feminism, since while other volumes have focused on retroactive portrayals of rape in literature, to date none has focused entirely on the subversive work that is being done to retheorize sexual violence.
Split into four sections, the volume considers sexual violence from a number of different angles. 'Subverting the Story' considers how the characters of the victim and rapist might be subverted in narratives of sexual violence. In 'Metaphors for Resistance,' the essays explore how writers approach the subject of rape obliquely using metaphors to represent their suffering and pain. The controversy of not speaking about sexual violence is the focus of 'The Protest of Silence,' while 'The Question of the Visual' considers the problems of making sexual violence visible in the poetic image, in film and on stage. These four sections cover an impressive range of world writing which includes curriculum staples like Toni Morrison, Sarah Kane, Sandra Cisneros, Yvonne Vera, and Achmat Dangor.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword: An Unsafe Subject, Moniza Alvi
Chapter 1: Introduction: Transnational Feminism(s) and Rape Scripts, Zoё Brigley Thompson and Sorcha Gunne
Part I: Subverting the Story
Chapter 2: Rape by Proxy in Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Fiction, Carine M. Mardorossian
Chapter 3: Sabotaging the Language of Pride: Toni Morrison's Representations of Rape, Tessa Roynon
Chapter 4: Revising Chicana Womanhood: Gender Violence in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on
Part II: Resistance Metaphors
Chapter 5: Between Awra and Arab Feminism: Sexual Violence and Representational Crisis in El Sawaadi’s Woman at Point Zero, Anna Ball.
Chapter 6: Writing Rape: The Politics of Resistance in Yvonne Vera’s Novels, Fiona McCann
Chapter 7: Il/legitimacy: Sexual Violence, Mental Health, and Resisting Abjection in Camilla Gibb’s Mouthing the Words and Elizabeth Ruth’s Ten Good Seconds of Silence, Susan Billingham
Part III: The Protest of Silence
Chapter 8: Testimony and Silence: Sexual Violence and the Holocaust, Zoё Waxman
Chapter 9: ‘Mum is the word’: Gender Violence, Displacement and the Refugee Camp in Yasmin Ladha’s Documentary-Fiction, Belén Martín-Lucas
Chapter 10: Double Violation? (Not) Talking about Sexual Violence in Contemporary South Asia, Ananya Jahanara Kabir
Chapter 11: Questioning Truth and Reconciliation: Writing Rape in Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit and Kagiso Lesego Molope’s Dancing in the Dust, Sorcha Gunne
Part IV: The Question of the Visual
Chapter 12: Signifying Rape: Problems of Representing Sexual Violence on Stage, Lisa Fitzpatrick
Chapter 13: The Wound and the Mask: Rape, Recovery and Poetry in Pascale Petit’s The Wounded Deer: Fourteen Poems After Frida Kahlo, Zoë Brigley Thompson
Chapter 14: ‘It’s about power’: Rape, Realism and the Fantastic on Television, Lorna Jowett
