>
> > Should we define rape as a sexual offense or as a criminal assault?
>
> if this is a pole....to my mind rape is not in the least bit sexual. it is
> always an act of psychic and physical violence, it has nothing to do with
> sex and very little to do with gender
I'm not so sure what it would mean to Foucault to say this, and
perhaps this is where the difficulty lies. To say that rape is not
sexual seems to me to be conflating the descriptive with the
prescriptive--what is this empirical thing, "sexuality," which knows
nothing of violence?
I don't really see that we lose anything ethically, politically, or
philosophically by stating rather that rape is a violent act, an
intolerable act, and *should* therefore have no part in the set of
practices and relations through which we constitute ourselves as
sexual beings.
>. in the US it is also about a
> capatilist economy built and dependant upon violence and violent intrusion
> that travels easily from the finest rooms in the finest hotels, through the
> parks and into the prisons. it is about power and territory/boundary. in
> this way its violence is always assaultive and unquestionably criminal.
>
> F L I P
>
>
The charactarization of "always criminal" is another potentially
problematic statement--what is this eternal criminal that is being
invoked here? This statement leaps from act to person, to type.
When dealing with social statements like "a criminal is the type of
person who commits these kind of acts," Foucault asks us to be aware
of the disciplinary matrix that forms around the locus, 'criminal,'
and adds more to it than is contained in the act itself.
///Connor
>
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E.M. Connor Durflinger Philosopher for Hire
"Have Forestructures, Will Travel"
Reverend, Universal Life Church
bc05319@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx PIC Program at B.U.
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