The Desire for Fact: Anti-Racist Ethics in Discourses of Sexual Violence

Document Type

Article

Authors

Hannah Manshel, University of California–RiversideFollow

Abstract

In this paper, I consider the way Vanessa Place’s book of experimental poetry Statement of Facts and Jana Leo’s memoir Rape New York use flat language to resist the requirement that a victim of sexual violence produce affect as evidence of sexual assault. This paper engages with critical work in Black Feminist studies and on surface reading to argue that flat writing, in its turn toward a-subjectivity and away from compulsory wounded affect, might offer an anti-racist alternative to a liberal narrative of rape as a crime that happens to an individual, middle-class, white female victim.

Recommended Citation

Manshel, Hannah (2018) "The Desire for Fact: Anti-Racist Ethics in Discourses of Sexual Violence," Criticism: Vol. 60: Iss. 4, Article 5.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol60/iss4/5