Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives: Violence and Violation

269 Pages·2009·3.363 MB·English

by  Sorcha Gunne, Zoe Brigley Thompson

Feminism, Literature
and Rape Narratives
ROUTLEDGE RESEARCH IN POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURES
Edited in collaboration with the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, University of Kent
at Canterbury, this series presents a wide range of research into postcolonial literatures by spe-
cialists in the fi eld. Volumes will concentrate on writers and writing originating in previously (or
presently) colonized areas, and will include material from non-anglophone as well as anglophone
colonies and literatures. Series editors: Donna Landry and Caroline Rooney
1. Magical Realism in West African Fiction: Seeing with a Third Eye by Brenda Cooper
2. The Postcolonial Jane Austen edited by You-Me Park and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan
3. Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Poetry: Making Style by Denise deCaires Narain
4. African Literature, Animism and Politics by Caroline Rooney
5. Caribbean-English Passages: Intertextuality in a Postcolonial Tradition by Tobias Döring
6. Islands in History and Representation edited by Rod Edmond and Vanessa Smith
7. Civility and Empire: Literature and Culture in British India, 1822-1922 by Anindyo Roy
8. Women Writing the West Indies, 1804-1939: ‘A Hot Place, Belonging To Us’ by Evelyn O’Callaghan
9. Postcolonial Pacifi c Writing: Representations of the Body by Michelle Keown
10. Writing Woman, Writing Place: Contemporary Australian and South African Fiction by Sue Kossew
11. Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence by Priyamvada
Gopal
12. Postcolonial Conrad: Paradoxes of Empire by Terry Collits
13. American Pacifi cism: Oceania in the U.S. Imagination by Paul Lyons
14. Decolonizing Cultures in the Pacifi c: Reading History and Trauma in Contemporary Fiction by Susan
Y. Najita
15. Writing Sri Lanka: Literature, Resistance and the Politics of Place by Minoli Salgado
16. Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary by Vijay Mishra
17. Secularism in the Postcolonial Indian Novel: National and Cosmopolitan Narratives in English by
Neelam Srivastava
18. English Writing and India, 1600-1920: Colonizing Aesthetics by Pramod K. Nayar
19. Decolonising Gender: Literature, Enlightenment and the Feminine Real by Caroline Rooney
20. Postcolonial Theory and Autobiography by David Huddart
21. Contemporary Arab Women Writers by Anastasia Valassopoulos
22. Postcolonialism, Psychoanalysis and Burton: Power Play of Empire by Ben Grant
23. Transnationalism in Southern African Literature: Modernists, Realists, and the Inequality of Print
Culture by Stefan Helgesson
24. Land and Nationalism in Fictions from Southern Africa by James Graham
25. Paradise Discourse, Imperialism, and Globalization: Exploiting Eden by Sharae Deckard
26. The Idea of the Antipodes: Place, People, and Voices by Matthew Boyd Goldie
27. Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives: Violence and Violation edited by Sorcha Gunne and
Zoë Brigley Thompson
Related Titles
Postcolonial Life-Writing: Culture, Politics, and Self-Representation by Bart Moore-Gilbert
Feminism, Literature
and Rape Narratives
Violence and Violation
Edited by Sorcha Gunne
and Zoë Brigley Thompson
NEW YORK AND LONDON
First published 2010
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2010 Taylor & Francis
Typeset in Baskerville by IBT Global
Printed and bound in United States by IBT Global.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now know nor hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Feminism, literature and rape narratives : violence and violation / edited by Sorcha Gunne
and Zoë Brigley Thompson.
p. cm.—(Routledge research in postcolonial literatures ; v. 27)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Rape in literature. 2. Violence in literature. 3. Women in literature. 4. Feminist
literature—History and criticism. I. Gunne, Sorcha. II. Brigley Thompson, Zoë.
PN56.R24F46 2009
809'.933556—dc22
2009033862
ISBN10: 0-415-80608-9 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-80608-4 (hbk)
I will speak a dark language with the music of a harp.
—Anne Michaels
Fiction gives eyes to the horrifi ed narrator.
Eyes to see and to weep. . .
—Paul Ricoeur

Contents
List of Figures ix
Foreword: ‘An Unsafe Subject’ xi
MONIZA ALVI
Acknowledgements xxi
1 Introduction: Feminism without Borders: The Potentials and
Pitfalls of Retheorizing Rape 1
ZOË BRIGLEY THOMPSON AND SORCHA GUNNE
Part I: Subverting the Story
2 Rape by Proxy in Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Fiction 23
CARINE M. MARDOROSSIAN
3 Sabotaging the Language of Pride: Toni Morrison’s
Representations of Rape 38
TESSA ROYNON
4 Revising Chicana Womanhood: Gender Violence in Sandra
Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street 54
ROBIN E. FIELD
Part II: Resistance Metaphors
5 Between ‘Awra and Arab Feminism: Sexual Violence and
Representational Crisis in Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero 71
ANNA BALL
6 Writing Rape: The Politics of Resistance in Yvonne Vera’s Novels 85
FIONA MCCANN
viii Contents
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 96
SUSAN BILLINGHAM
Part III: The Protest of Silence
8 Testimony and Silence: Sexual Violence and the Holocaust 117
ZOË WAXMAN
9 ‘Mum Is the Word’: Gender Violence, Displacement and the
Refugee Camp in Yasmin Ladha’s Documentary-Fiction 130
BELÉN MARTÍN-LUCAS
10 Double Violation? (Not) Talking about Sexual Violence in
Contemporary South Asia 146
ANANYA JAHANARA KABIR
11 Questioning Truth and Reconciliation: Writing Rape in
Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit and Kagiso Lesego Molope’s
Dancing in the Dust 164
SORCHA GUNNE
Part IV: The Question of the Visual
12 Signifying Rape: Problems of Representing Sexual Violence on Stage 183
LISA FITZPATRICK
13 The Wound and the Mask: Rape, Recovery and Poetry in
Pascale Petit’s The Wounded Deer: Fourteen Poems after Frida Kahlo 200
ZOË BRIGLEY THOMPSON
14 Rape, Power, Realism and the Fantastic on Television 217
LORNA JOWETT
List of Editors and Contributors 233
Index 239
Figures
0.1 Front cover of Moniza Alvi’s collection, Europa (Tarset:
Bloodaxe 2008). xvi
10.1 Photograph of the artist Firdousi Priyabhashini’s studio and
home, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Taken by Ananya Jahanara
Kabir, 2009. 159
13.1 Frida Kahlo (1938), Self-Portrait with Monkey. Oil on masonite
40.6 × 30.5 cm. Buffalo (NY), Albright-Knox Gallery,
Bequest of A. Conger Goodyear 1966. 211
14.1 Still from ‘Pegasus’, Battlestar Galactica Season 2 Episode 10. 226