Sexual Violence in Western Thought and Writing Chaste Rape

"We learn from Vitanza how an eccentric axiology may realign completely our understanding of the central features of civilization."--Gregory L. Ulmer, University of Florida"Vitanza cracks open a forbidden dossier to address the pernicious eventfulness of rape. Timely and distressing, this dreadful work--henceforth unavoidable--swallows whole some aggressively traumatic markers of shared life: What if all our tropes and histories, including the most virtuous, were based on unavowed acts of violation? Derrida has shown how the very principle of hospitality in the Bible hails from Lots' making his daughters sexually available to strangers. Vitanza probes relentlessly into the open secret of relationality, civilization and its profile of social destruction . To my mind this is truly an impossible book--which is why I need interminably to work it through."--Avital Ronell, University Professor of the Humanities, New York University and author of "The Test Drive"