“Show us how much it Hurts”: A Relational-processual Approach to Redistributing Shame after Rape Towards Nuanced, Effective Activism

This article systematically criticises two still prominent but deeply problematic discourses about rape. We call them the “Damaged Goods” discourse related to victims/survivors of rape, and the “Monstrous Perpetrators” discourse associated with perpetrators of rape, respectively. Our lens for doing so is characterised by a relational-processual understanding of both people and events. While both these pervasive discursive thematics have their roots in understandable considerations, we show that when the meanings of events become fixed in such terms, and moreover the involved parties are permanently identified with such fixed meanings, then neither the relational nor the processual dimension of the human condition is respected. Without becoming prescriptive about how victim-survivors or perpetrators should feel and act, our focus is upon the discursive and thus imaginative spaces that societies either open up or close down around the topic of rape. We take our cue from the controversy that surrounded the book South of Forgiveness: A True Story of Rape and Responsibility, by Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger (2017).