Rethinking Rape / Edition 1

by Ann J. Cahill

Overview

Rape, claims Ann J. Cahill, affects not only those women who are raped, but all women who experience their bodies as rapable and adjust their actions and self-images accordingly. Rethinking Rape counters legal and feminist definitions of rape as mere assault and decisively emphasizes the centrality of the body and sexuality in a crime which plays a crucial role in the continuing oppression of women.Rethinking Rape applies current feminist theory to an urgent political and ethical issue. Cahill takes an original approach by reading the subject of rape through the work of such recent continental feminist thinkers as Luce Irigaray, Elizabeth Grosz, Rosi Braidotti, and Judith Butler, who understand the body as fluid and indeterminate, a site for the negotiation of power and resistance. Cahill interprets rape as an embodied, sexually marked experience, a violation of feminine bodily integrity, and a pervasive threat to the integrity and identity of a woman's person.The wrongness of rape, which has always eluded legal interpretation, cannot be defined as theft, battery, or the logical extension of heterosexual sex. It is not limited to a specific event, but encompasses the myriad ways in which rape threatens the prospect of feminine agency. As an explication that fully countenances women's experiences of their own bodies, Rethinking Rape helps point the way toward reparation, resistance, and the evolution of feminine subjectivity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801487187
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	03/26/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ann J. Cahill is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Elon University in North Carolina. She is the editor of Continental Feminism Reader.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction: The Problem of Rape	1
Chapter 1	Feminist Theories of Rape: Sex or Violence?	15
Chapter 2	Subjectivity and the Body	50
Chapter 3	Feminist Theories of the Body: The Material Subject	71
Chapter 4	Rape as Embodied Experience	109
Chapter 5	A Phenomenology of Fear: The Threat of Rape and Feminine Bodily Comportment	143
Chapter 6	The Ethical Wrongs of Rape	167
	Conclusion: Possibilities for Resistance	198
	Notes	209
	Bibliography	219
	Index	227

What People are Saying About This

Sue Scheibler

Ann Cahill's Rethinking Rape is a theoretical intervention that rightly challenges unproblematized histories of the body and subjectivity. Cahill begins with an analysis of two major schools of feminist philosophy. The first one defines rape as 'violence, not sex' and is characterized by the work of Susan Brownmiller, while the school associated with Catharine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin represents rape as an extension of compulsory heterosexuality. For Cahill, both schools wrongly establish an opposition between the violent and the sexual and perpetuate in doing so the nature / culture binary. Woman is seen as slave to biology on one hand and the dupe of patriarchal culture on the other. Neither theory adequately addresses the sexed body, which is what Cahill seeks to remedy in Rethinking Rape.

Susan J. Brison

Rethinking Rape is an extremely interesting, well researched, and accessibly written book on a significant and timely topic. Ann Cahill's focus on rape as seen through recent continental feminist theories is original and much needed in the literature.

Isabel Gois

Ann Cahill has written an important and well-balanced book on a subject that is known to fuel passions and not much clear thinking. The book merits the more praise for such qualities since it is written from a feminist perspective, which some may consider off-putting... Ann Cahill's Rethinking Rape stands out for its unruffled approach, as well as its careful argumentation... All in all, I would vividly recommend this book to a wide audience. It is full of insightful reflections, and certainly talks to women's experience of the fear and facts of sexual violence.

November 2001 Choice

Influenced by poststructuralist and feminist thought, Cahill reconsiders the social and political phenomenon of rape.... Recommended for upper-division undergraduates and above.

Marilyn Frye

It is high time rape was back on the agenda of feminist theory and being dealt with anew in the frame of contemporary well-developed feminist theories of the body. Up-to-date and respectful of 'second wave' theories, rich with both reminders and new questions, Cahill's discussions will be accessible and provocative to theorists and activists of all the waves.

Editorial Reviews

Cahill provides a readable and well-researched book on feminist theories that have guided our strategies on rape.... This provocative book will re-draw our attention to rape as a central concern for feminist activism.

-- "Feminist Academic Press"

From the Publisher

Cahill provides a readable and well-researched book on feminist theories that have guided our strategies on rape.... This provocative book will re-draw our attention to rape as a central concern for feminist activism.

Feminist Academic Press