Rape Culture"
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The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgementTown of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Cape Published by the University ofof Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University Constructing Rape, Imagining Self: Discourses of Rape and Gendered Subjectivity in South Mrica Simidele Dosekun DSKSIMOOl A dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Master of SocialTown Science in Gender and Transformation Cape of Faculty of the Humanities University of Cape Town 2007 University COMPULSORY DECLARATION This work has not been previously submitted in whole, or in part, for the award of any degree. It is my own work. Each significant contribution to, and quotation in, this dissertation from the work, or works, of other people has been attributed, and has been cited and referenced. Table of Contents Abstract 1 1 Introduction 2 2 Theory and Epistemology 13 3 Methodology 22 4 Constructing Rape 40 5 Imagining Self Town 76 6 Conclusion 119 Appendices Cape 125 Bibliography of 130 University Abstract This thesis explores the meanings and impact of rape in South Africa for fifteen women located at the University of Cape Town (UCT) who claim to have never experienced rape. Drawing upon feminist post-structuralist theories of subjectivity and taking a discursive analytic approach, the thesis explores how these women construct the phenomenon of rape in their society and thereby imagine themselves. It is based upon empirical data collected through qualitative interviews. Analysis of this data shows that the women discursively construct rape as highly prevalent in South Africa but ordinarily distant from their personal lives, concerning then 'the Other.' However, it is argued that the women also construct themselves as gendered and embodied subjects inherently vulnerable to male violence such as rape. This means that the fear and imagination of rape are not absent from their daily lives, but rather shape theirTown sense of safety, agency, sexuality and citizenship in South Africa. Because these fifteen women deny personal experiences of rape, the thesis shows that they draw on public discourses and their subjective imaginations to theorise rape and rape crisisCape in post-apartheid South Africa. of University 1 Introduction This thesis offers a discursive analysis of rape and gendered subjectivity in post apartheid South Africa from the perspective of women in the country who claim to have not experienced rape. Assuming a context in which South Africa is widely said to be in a rape crisis, this thesis seeks to explore how such women construct the alleged rape of other women around them and how, in the process, they imagine themselves. It does so on the basis of feminist post-structuralist theories of sUbjectivity. These theories maintain that discourses of vulnerability to male violence, including rape, are central to the construction of women's gendered subjectivities. The contention then is that women who do not personally experience violence such as rape may be yet impacted by the fear and imagination of it. Following from this, the thesis takes the epistemological perspective that women who say they have never experienced rape may yetTown have much to say about rape. The fifteen women I met and spoke with in this work would suggest that this is indeed the case. Through their various narratives Capeof experience, analyses of discourse and deployments of imagination, they construct rape as a prevalent phenomenon in South Africa and position themselves as genderedof subjects who are inherently vulnerable to it. Therefore, the threat of rape is something many claim to take into account as they negotiate safety in their daily lives, especially in public space with unknown men. Likewise the fear of rape and, or with, other forms of violence is an emotion many of the women report feeling and managing on a frequent basis. Even if these fifteen women do not ultimately imagineUniversity that rape is a likely possibility for them, they construct its prevalent occurrence in their society as a factor which adversely impacts upon the quality of their gendered and embodied lives here and now. In the following discussion, I briefly elaborate upon the contemporary context of rape in South Africa to which these women refer, and from which this thesis proceeds. 2 .. Context: Discourses of Rape Crisis in the New South Africa Rape is a grave problem in the new South Africa, according to political, media and popular discourse on the matter (du Toit 2005; Nuttall 2004; Posel 2005). Through these channels, the post-apartheid nation has been discursively exposed and constructed as that which I will call 'rape-dense,' meaning a space in which rape is extraordinarily present or prevalent. I This is not specialist knowledge, limited to activists and academics, the police or other state institutions. Nor is it only local; my personal apprehensions as a foreigner moving here in 2006, and the warnings from friends and family located outside the country, suggest an external association between South Africa and the threat of rape. The statistics on the prevalence of rape in the country are a key source of this information. Although there is no consensus amongst researchers on where the figures precisely stand, all concur that they are alarmingly high (Jewkes and Abrahams 2002; Statistics South Africa 2000). Statistical studies of rape in SouthTown Africa are driven by variously overlapping and opposing research agendas, including feminist, criminological and public health (e.g. Ackerman and de Klerk 2002). Their findings differ depending on variables such as sample size, methodology and definitionsCape used, which also affect their statistical reliability and applicability to theof entire South African population (Jewkes and Abrahams 2002; Statistics South Africa 2000). Jewkes and Abrahams (2002) further list a number of sociological and cultural factors that make it virtually impossible to calculate the definitive rape statistic in South Africa (or indeed elsewhere). They argue that incidents of rape reported to the police, the most readily available source of national data, represent the "tip of the iceberg" (2002: 1231). Reasons for this include the social stigma often attached to womenUniversity who allege rape, the fear these women may have of the police and other intervening institutions, and the domestic and socio-economic pressures which may discourage them from reporting rape, especially if the perpetrator is a family member or breadwinner (2002: 1232). Despite such challenges to definitively quantifying rape in South Africa, various figures circulate frequently and perhaps too easily in public discourses of rape. These figures are uniformly horrific though they differ in magnitude and origin, if the latter is at all cited or explained. Thus one may come across statements such as: "1 in 2 women have I This expression, 'rape dense,' was suggested to me by my thesis supervisor, Prof. J. Bennett. 3 a chance of being raped in their lifetime;" "a woman is raped every 26 seconds in South Africa" (People Opposing Woman Abuse Website); and "there are 35 rapes for everyone reported to the police" (Human Rights Watch 1995, cited in Jewkes and Abrahams 2002: 1231). Clearly such "rape statistics," as they are branded, are not neutral. They motivate and legitimise feminist mobilisation, media attention and public concern. Conversely, they have become the objects of politicised refutation, most notably from key members of the new government for reasons which will be proposed further below (Erlank 2005; Moffett 2006). President Thabo Mbeki, for instance, alleged in a 1999 speech that the rape statistics were imprecise, sensationalist and decontextualised. Having condemned the occurrence of any rape in South Africa, he argued therefore: "it is unnecessary and counter-productive for anybody to propagate untruth about the incidence of this crime in our country ... The tragedy is that many of us have taken these purely speculative figures as fact" (Mbeki 1999, cited in Erlank 2005:204).Town As suggested, the "fact" which the rape statistics expose and construct through their deployment and dissemination in public discourse is that of a rape crisis in South Africa. It must be stressed the extent to which discoursesCape ofrape crisis are new, occurring within and referring to the post-apartheid context. Posel argues that there was an "explosion" of public talk of rape in the mid-1990s,of prior to which, under the apartheid regime, "the issue of sexual violence in South Africa had languished on the margins of public debate and political engagement" (2005:24). Thus she theorises the heightened public awareness of rape in the country today in terms of a discursive shift, consequent upon an eruption of rape into the realm of the publicly 'speakable,' not necessarily an eruption of rape itself.University Du Toit concurs, explaining that if "the statistics seem to show a sharp rise in the rape rate after 1994 this should more likely be interpreted as the 'normalization' of statistics in a climate of greater political stability and as an indication of women's determination to make the new democracy work for them" (2005:269). If so, this can be read as a certain victory for South African feminists, in so far as it is a feminist goal to break the social silence around rape and other forms of gender based abuse which women suffer (Ferraro 1996; Jackson 1993). Feminist activism has been in fact critical in putting rape on the public agenda in South Africa, especially in the context of the major institutional and political changes of the post-apartheid transition. 4 According to Pose I (2005), South African feminists, like their counterparts in Europe and North America, first began to mobilise against rape in the late 1970s.