Sexual Violations and the Question of Experience

Journal article


Alcoff, Linda Martín. (2014). Sexual Violations and the Question of Experience. New Literary History. 45(3), pp. 445 - 462. https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2014.0030
AuthorsAlcoff, Linda Martín
Abstract

This paper explores the complications of naming and interpreting experiences of sexual violation that arise from the complexity of experience and the possibility of a discursive relativism. If our experiences are discursively and historically constituted, even in part, by the happenstance of the cultures we are born into, by what Foucault wonderfully called our historical a priori, how does this alter the epistemic status, and fruitfulness, of experience claims, and the epistemic authority of survivors? I argue that interpretive processes are usefully understood as occurring within a phenomenological context and as a practice of enacting affordances: in this way variability can be explained without obviating the special epistemic status of survivors.

Year2014
JournalNew Literary History
Journal citation45 (3), pp. 445 - 462
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2014.0030
Scopus EID2-s2.0-84911874317
Page range445 - 462
Research GroupInstitute for Social Justice
Publisher's version
File Access Level
Controlled
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https://acuresearchbank.acu.edu.au/item/894q4/sexual-violations-and-the-question-of-experience

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