Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape : Affirming the Dignity of the Vulnerable Body

Debra B. Bergoffen

ISBN 10: 0415891272 / ISBN 13: 9780415891271

Editore: Routledge, 2011

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nach der Bestellung gedruckt Neuware - Printed after ordering - Rape, traditionally a spoil of war, became a weapon of war in the ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia. The ICTY Kunarac court responded by transforming wartime rape from an ignored crime into a crime against humanity. In its judgment, the court argued that the rapists violated the Muslim women's right to sexual self-determination. Announcing this right to sexual integrity, the court transformed women's vulnerability from an invitation to abuse into a mark of human dignity. This close reading of the trial, guided by the phenomenological themes of the lived body and ambiguity, feminist critiques of the autonomous subject and the liberal sexual/social contract, critical legal theory assessments of human rights law and institutions, and psychoanalytic analyses of the politics of desire, argues that the court, by validating women's epistemic authority (their right to establish the meaning of their experience of rape) and affirming the dignity of the vulnerable body (thereby dethroning the autonomous body as the embodiment of dignity), shows us that human rights instruments can be used to combat the epidemic of wartime rape if they are read as de-legitimating the authority of the masculine autonomous subject and the gender codes it anchors.

Codice articolo 9780415891271

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape : Affirming the Dignity of the Vulnerable Body
• Editore: Routledge
• Data di pubblicazione: 2011
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0415891272
• ISBN 13: 9780415891271
• Rilegatura: Buch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 235 L x 157 A x 13 P (millimetri) 235 millimetri di larghezza per 157 millimetri di altezza per 13 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 370 grammi

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Riassunto

Rape, traditionally a spoil of war, became a weapon of war in the ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia. The ICTY Kunarac court responded by transforming wartime rape from an ignored crime into a crime against humanity. In its judgment, the court argued that the rapists violated the Muslim women’s right to sexual self-determination. Announcing this right to sexual integrity, the court transformed women’s vulnerability from an invitation to abuse into a mark of human dignity. This close reading of the trial, guided by the phenomenological themes of the lived body and ambiguity, feminist critiques of the autonomous subject and the liberal sexual/social contract, critical legal theory assessments of human rights law and institutions, and psychoanalytic analyses of the politics of desire, argues that the court, by validating women’s epistemic authority (their right to establish the meaning of their experience of rape) and affirming the dignity of the vulnerable body (thereby dethroning the autonomous body as the embodiment of dignity), shows us that human rights instruments can be used to combat the epidemic of wartime rape if they are read as de-legitimating the authority of the masculine autonomous subject and the gender codes it anchors.

Informazioni sull?autore

Debra B. Bergoffen is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at George Mason University.