Identity

Abstract

Chapter 2 considers women’s accounts of sexual violence to expose the contemporary categorisation of the ‘rape victim’ as an inherently vulnerable and careless, discreditable and tainted woman (Mardorossian 2014). Caught within shame, the individualism of therapy culture, and the oppositional politics of ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’, women describe a judged and restricted life. To offer the possibility of agency and transformation, in order to reassess subjectivity without categorisation, it is proposed that identity is not fixed and singular, but rather complicit and resistive (Foucault 1991; 2007) and emerges in ethical relations with others (Butler 2006) and within language, power, and social structures.