Looking across time and the globe, a critical history of sexual violenceβwhat causes it and how we overcome it.
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Disgrace is the first truly global history of sexual violence. The book explores how sexual violence varies widely across time and place, from nineteenth-century peasant women in Ireland who were abducted as a way of forcing marriage, to date-raped high-school students in twentieth-century America, and from girls and women violated by Russian soldiers in 1945 to Dalit women raped by men of higher castes today. It delves into the factors that facilitate violenceβincluding institutions, ideologies, and practicesβbut also gives voice to survivors and activists, drawing inspiration from their struggles. Ultimately, Joanna Bourke intends to forge a transnational feminism that will promote a more harmonious, equal, and rape- and violence-free world.
"Bourke offers a transnational history of sexual violence and calls for a transversal form of solidarity to bring sexual violence to an end. This comprehensive work draws upon cases and reports from across the world to show both the specificity and pervasive quality of sexual violence. She argues that disgrace and shame are too often borne by those who suffer violence, when they belong properly to those who inflict it. At the same time, she holds accountable legal and public institutions, and family policy, for normalizing the effects of sexual violence, calling for a broad-based solidarity based on legal action, human rights demands, popular culture, digital activism, and local forms of justice to oppose rape and sexual violence in all its forms. This work is a bold and impressive account of sexual violence, drawing its examples from multiple regions and languages, calling into question the normalization of violence as well as its depoliticized versions. Every carefully crafted litany of pain is followed by numerous reasons for hope. A capacious, clear-eyed view of violation that leads to a nuanced call for a future of global solidarity." -- Judith Butler