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Dark academia notion covers7/7/2023 Throughout this thesis I argue for the value of reading autobiographical texts alongside rape scholarship to facilitate an engaged understanding of the way discourses on rape are mutually reinforcing and are produced and reproduced across a range of discursive sites. Far from individualizing the rape story, a critical analysis of these diverse texts illustrates how survivor narratives can challenge rape myths, victim culpability and dominant discourses. This constrains the political potential of his memoir. I argue that while Kalven makes a case for rape to be considered torture, his account is troubling as he takes ownership of his wife’s story and enacts discursive violence by producing a text that disempowers the survivor. I include Kalven’s memoir of his wife’s rape to examine the nuances of power, privilege and the competition over the meaning of rape for survivors. Driscoll also rejects narratives of ‘personal growth’ that position rape as a difficult personal experience which one can overcome by adopting a survivor mentality. They resist the redemptive narrative arc, thereby politicizing their individual stories and challenging the complicity of the community. These texts diverge from conventional ways of representing the rape story, compelling their audience to understand rape as prevalent and everyday gender-based violence. My methodological approach engages a feminist critical analysis of Alice Sebold’s Lucky (2002 ), Frances Driscoll’s The Rape Poems (1997) and Jamie Kalven’s Working with Available Light (1999) positioned within a socio-legal conceptual framework and informed by an understanding of trauma. Nonetheless, published autobiographical texts remain an underutilized resource that can offer further insight into the influence of readers and the literary market in shaping the rape story. In the last few decades, disciplines of criminology, social psychology, linguistics, and legal studies have used a variety of social research methodologies to enhance understandings of rape myths and the context within which survivors make sense of their experience. I argue for the value in conceptualizing three primary ‘gatekeepers’ of the rape story (cultural, literary and judicial) that force a particular kind of story to emerge, which can lead to survivor narratives paradoxically perpetuating rape myths and recuperating dominant discourses. hi, my name is lyn i wanted to show you guys how i set up my dark academia notion setup due to some requests q: what notion pages do you use i wanna add so. To cultivate an awareness of the complex and multifaceted influences and power dynamics shaping the rape story, I examine the development and production of survivor discourse. In order to find an audience to bear witness to the trauma, women often have to perform according to social expectations, modify their emotions to be accepted and dilute any politically disruptive messages. Even where rape circumstances fit within the definitions of the ‘standard rape narrative’, survivors must still compete against victim-blaming attitudes, rape myths and cultural silencing. Women writing about their experiences of rape often find that the disempowering effects of rape continues into the aftermath when they face a hostile environment that frequently denies and silences their experience.
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