Ambivalent Scales: Methods for Reading Scenes of Sexual Violation

<p>The importance of unveiling rape in the #MeToo era has unintentionally obscured encounters that lack the clarity of “yes” or “no.” However, desire can be ambiguous even in unambiguous cases of assault. Feminist activists and scholars have started to address ambiguity by arguing for a new epistemology of rape, what Linda Alcoff calls “grey rape.” In this thesis, I interrogate the “grey” embedded in ordinary sexual encounters by looking at ambivalence as an example of everyday desire evident across the seduction plot and the novel tradition. Rather than seeking to make consent more inclusive to oppressed groups, I read between the binary logics of “yes” or “no,” “force” or “fraud,” “seduction” or “rape,” “compulsion” or “unhindered choice,” towards alternative modes of sexual relation, of which ambivalence is one. To have ambivalent desire is to be overwhelmed by a dialectic of contradictory emotions, perpetually suspended in what Toni Bowers calls the “shadowy realm of ‘or’” in the consent binary. I bring into relation texts that share themes of sexual violation and physical suffering, yet which offer a glimpse of pleasure in catastrophe. These include <em>Measure for Measure</em>, <em>Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady</em>, <em>Dora: Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria</em>, and <em>Monsieur Venus</em>.<em> </em>I explore how a critique of consent that incorporates ambivalence can generate methodological innovations for reading scenes of everyday sexual violation.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Master

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Liberal Studies

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2023

Author dc:creator

• Ruby, Natalie

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Carrie Hintz

• Literature in English, British Isles
• Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
• Women's Studies
• Sexual Violation
• Psychoanalysis
• Samuel Richardson

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5564

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-6577