Enabling violence: the ethics of writing and reading rape in South Africa

Lloyd, Dylan Reumen

Title: Enabling violence: the ethics of writing and reading rape in South Africa
Creator: Lloyd, Dylan Reumen
Subject: Rape -- South Africa
Subject: Rape -- Fiction
Subject: Rape in literature
Subject: Rape in literature -- South Africa
Subject: Psychic trauma in literature
Subject: Post-traumatic stress disorder in literature
Subject: Dystopias in literature
Subject: Coetzee, J. M., 1940- Disgrace
Subject: South African fiction (English) -- History and criticism
Date Issued: 2020
Date: 2020
Type: Thesis
Type: Masters
Type: MA
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/166173
Identifier: vital:41335
Description: This thesis is concerned with describing the stakes of reading, writing and criticising fictional depictions of rape in a country plagued by high levels of sexual violence. I consider the capacity of rape representations to cause harm to women and rape survivors, and worsen the various injuries suffered by survivors as a direct or indirect consequence of rape. The possibility of such harm prompts me to examine the role and responsibilities of readers and critics in facilitating or preventing such harm. I further discuss the potential strategies of harm prevention that readers of novelistic portrayals of rape might adopt as well as the positive outcomes that such reading strategies make possible, and which might balance out the risks that accompany them. My description of the potential harm of rape representations combines postmodern critical feminist analysis with Miranda Fricker’s work on epistemic justice and Judith Herman’s work on trauma in order to illustrate the way that these representations shape our conception of rape in a manner that affects everything from how it is enacted to our treatment of survivors to the possibility of their recovery from posttraumatic stress disorder. In order to situate my analysis in the context of South African literature and to explore the notion of responsibility in relation to the writing of scenes of rape, I utilise a close reading of J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. Furthermore, I discuss the utility and limits of the critical feminist strategy of using a normative critical approach to rape representations in order to prevent harm. Ultimately, I argue that the use of such a strategy, along with the development of a purpose-honed adaptive critical style, is essential to the fulfilment of our responsibilities as readers and to the prevention of further suffering.
Format: 138 pages
Format: pdf
Publisher: Rhodes University
Publisher: Faculty of Humanities, English
Language: English
Rights: Lloyd, Dylan Reuben

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