Rape and Resistance

ISBN-13: 9780745691916 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 264 str.

Linda Mart Alcoff

Opis

Sexual violence has become a topic of intense media scrutiny, thanks to the bravery of survivors coming forward to tell their stories. But, unfortunately, media reports too often portray sexual violence in a way that inhibits proper understanding of its causes, placing too much emphasis on individual responsibility or blaming minority cultures. Meanwhile, the perspective of survivors is too often ignored or discredited. In this powerful and original book, Linda MartIn Alcoff maps out various strategies to help correct the misleading language of public debate about rape and sexual violence. She argues that we need to understand the role that language and ideas play in shaping our experiences of violation: if we are to change public attitudes to rape, we need to understand how we evaluate and interpret events. Rather than falling back on universal definitions, we need to be more sensitive to the local and personal contexts in which these crimes are committed: these contexts affect how activists' and survivors' protests will be received and understood. Moreover, even as we support survivors to speak out more forcefully, we should allow for their claims to be subjected to critical scrutiny: shutting down debate undermines activists' credibility amongst a sceptical public. Combining the experiences of an activist, a philosopher and a survivor, Alcoff has written a book that will revolutionise the way we think about rape, finally putting the survivor centre stage.

Recenzje

Alcoff s groundbreaking book draws on the author s decades of experience as a scholar, an activist, and a survivor. Her nuanced and richly informed work recognizes that violence is shaped by the ways in which we talk about it and yet that that it cannot be talked away. Alcoff s account attends both to the phenomenological irreducibility of sexual violence and to the variety of ways in which it is conceptualized across the world. She argues that different understandings of violence not only affect the ways in which we think about victims and survivors; they also shape the possibilities for advocacy and resistance.
Alison M. Jaggar, University of Colorado at Boulder

Linda Alcoff insists upon the need for and then provides a philosophical analysis of sexual violation that refuses to shy away from its political and social complexity. From her rejection of sexual libertarianism to her description of the ways in which sexual violence thwarts victims ability to contribute substantially to their own sexual becoming, Alcoff s writing is as lucid as it is insightful. A major and timely contribution to the theoretical literature on a pressing social problem.
Ann Cahill, Elon University

"Alcoff′s work is consistently insightful, clearly written, and well argued. She bravely tackles a number of contemporary challenges to feminist philosophy, including attacks on the epistemic authority of sexual assault victims, worries about making normative judgments about sex, difficulties with defining the concept of rape, and the political dangers of public discourse. ... The best book I have read in several years."
Debra L. Jackson, California State University, Bakersfield

Spis treści

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Rape after Foucault 1. Global Resistance: A New Agenda for Theory 2. The Thorny Question of Experience 3. Norming Sexual Practices 4. Sexual Subjectivity 5. Consent , Victim , Honor 6. Speaking As  (with Laura Gray–Rosendale) 7. The Problem of Speaking for Myself Conclusion: Standing in the Intersection Notes References Index

O autorze

Linda Martín Alcoff is Director of Women′s Studies and Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College, City University of New York.