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“My Body, My Choice!”: Rape Culture, the Body, and Feminist Protest in the Age of Neoliberalism

Fri, May 25, 11:00 to 12:15, Hilton Prague, Floor: LL, Madrid

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the theory of “rape culture” and the activist practices it galvanizes. My analysis is grounded in three sources: three years of ethnographic observations as an organizer of and participant in the March to End Rape Culture, the March’s digital and print media, and archival research on the history of the term “rape culture.” Drawing on these data, I trace the rise of rape culture as an organizing principle for contemporary feminism, the visions of domination and resistance it enables, and the political work it performs. Then, drawing on the digital and material lives of the March, I highlight the transgressive practices the March fosters in response to rape culture. Together, these two elements – theory and practice – constitute a contemporary feminist praxis that situates the individual body as a point of mediation between oppression at the macro-level and everyday life at the micro-level.

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