Rape and Resistance

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

• ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Rape after Foucault1. Global Resistance: A New Agenda for Theory2. The Thorny Question of Experience3. Norming Sexual Practices4. Sexual Subjectivity5. “Consent”, “Victim”, “Honor”6. Speaking As (with Laura Gray-Rosendale)7. The Problem of Speaking for MyselfConclusion: Standing in the IntersectionNotesReferencesIndex

“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“What Alcoff achieves is a deftly crafted exploration of not only how rape impacts the self, but of what constitutes ‘the self’ and how our selves are constantly in the making. She challenges us to rethink many of the concepts discussed so widely today, doing so in a deeply informed and reflective way.”Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books