What It Feels Like : : Visceral Rhetoric and the Politics of Rape Culture / / Stephanie R. Larson.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2021 English
• VerfasserIn: Larson, Stephanie R.,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Rhetoric and Democratic Deliberation ; 27
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (232 p.) :; 3 illustrations

What It Feels Like interrogates an underexamined reason for our failure to abolish rape in the United States: the way we communicate about it. Using affective and feminist materialist approaches to rhetorical criticism, Stephanie Larson examines how discourses about rape and sexual assault rely on strategies of containment, denying the felt experiences of victims and ultimately stalling broader claims for justice.Investigating anti-pornography debates from the 1980s, Violence Against Women Act advocacy materials, sexual assault forensic kits, public performances, and the #MeToo movement, Larson reveals how our language privileges male perspectives and, more deeply, how it is shaped by systems of power—patriarchy, white supremacy, and heteronormativity as well as masculine commitments to “science” or “evidence.” In addition, Larson finds that the culture holds a general mistrust of testimony by women, stereotyping it as “emotional.” But she also gives us hope for change, arguing that women’s testimony—the bodily, material expression of violation—is needed to give voice to victims of sexual violence and to present, accurately, the facts of these crimes. Larson makes a case for visceral rhetorics, theorizing them as powerful forms of communication and persuasion.Demonstrating the communicative power of bodily feeling, Larson challenges the long-held commitment to detached, distant, rationalized discourses of sexual harassment and rape. Timely and poignant, the book offers a much-needed corrective to our legal and political discourses.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface: The Problem with Origin Stories -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: bodies, feelings, and the rhetoric of rape culture -- 1 Sensing the nation at risk: sexual citizenship and the meese commission -- 2 The specter of patriarchy: imagining victims in bystander discourse -- 3 The proof is in the body: transcending rhetoric with rape kits -- 4 Disrupting silence: the law and visceral counterpublicity -- 5 Taking it all in: #metoo, feminist megethos, and list making -- Conclusion: “i was trapped in my body”: writing and living after rape -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index