(Re)Defining Rape: The Crippled Body as a Site of Power

There is nothing natural or permanent about the body and its sexuality. The "sexual" is constructed through a host of discourses including the legal, penal, medical, psychological and linguistic practices. Similarly, abuse has its own evolving history. I argue that the script of rape involves a flux of transforming masculinities and femininities, which destabilize the national rhetoric of gender. Rape shatters the sociological construct of gender to foreground the biological components of sex. Some of the questions which I intend to explore in my thesis are: How does physical violence translate into psychological trauma? How do women recast rape to acquire agency? How is rape performance?

Author

• Vedere, Sukshma

Language

• en

Keyword

• Rape

Date created

• 2013

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• English

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Daiya, Kavita

Committee Member(s)

• Harris, Jonathan Gil

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/zw12z542h