Our Bodies, Our Terrain
Situating Rape in Decolonial Feminist Frames from the Global South
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- Description
- Contents
- About
Sexual violence remains a global crisis, but the ways it is understood, narrated, and governed are profoundly unequal. Our Bodies, Our Terrain repositions rape as a structural and epistemic form of domination produced through colonial, legal, and patriarchal power.
Bringing together original, empirically grounded chapters from Africa and South Asia, this interdisciplinary volume examines how rape is normalized, silenced, and contested across law, state institutions, kinship systems, and regimes of public morality. Drawing on interviews, life histories, ethnography, legal analysis, and feminist discourse analysis, contributors ask why some violations provoke public outrage while others are erased, minimized, or rendered “unrapeable.” The chapters in the volume traces the politics of silence, legal retraumatization, colonial continuities in justice systems, and feminist strategies of resistance and survival emerging from postcolonial contexts. Grounded in decolonial and intersectional feminist frameworks, it advances a comparative Global South perspective that challenges Eurocentric models that continue to shape scholarship, policy, and institutional responses to sexual violence.
Our Bodies, Our Terrain invites readers to rethink sexual violence, justice, and accountability beyond punitive and Western frameworks. It is essential reading for scholars, students, and practitioners in gender studies, sociology, criminology, law, anthropology, development studies, and global feminist studies.
Introduction Haunted by Silence: Decolonial Feminist Reckonings with Rape in the Global South; Soma Chaudhuri, Portia T. Loeto, and Godisang Mookodi
- Part I. Silenced by Design: Consent, Control, and the Erasure of Women’s Voices
- Chapter 1. The Complexities of Counting Wife Rape in African Contexts: The Road Ahead; Efiritha Chauraya and Dudziro Nhengu
- Chapter 2. Pakistan’s Consent Problem: Unpacking how a Culture of Control Informs a ‘Silence as Acceptance’ Paradigm; Maria Amir
- Chapter 3. A Purely Perplexing Problem: Non-Reporting of Gender-Based Violence and Femicide in South Africa; Sibusiso Mkwananzi, Motlalepule Nathane, Polite Khanyisa Chauke, and Pamela Maluleke
- Part II. State, Law and the Politics of Re-traumatization
- Chapter 4. Rape Debility and State Power: The Construct of ‘Rapeable’ Bodies in Contemporary Bangladesh; Nazia Manzoor and Musharrat Hossain
- Chapter 5. The Afterlives of Rape: Epistemic Erasure, Legal Failures, and the Politics of Testimony in India; Puja Raj
- Chapter 6. Patriarchal State Structures and Institutional Failures in Addressing Sexual Violence: A Critical Analysis of the VAPP Act in Enugu State, Nigeria; Raymond ADIBE, Ruth Obioma NGOKA, and Ndubuisi ISAAC
- Chapter 7. Socio-Cultural Barriers to Reporting Rape and the Lived Experiences of Survivors in Southeast Nigeria; Anthonia Ifeyinwa ACHIKE, Eberechukwu Jennifer EZEA, Raymond ADIBE, and Christian Basil OMEH
- Part III. Marginalization and Feminist Futures
- Chapter 8. Are LGBTQI Individuals Just Sexual Beings? Myths and Realities About LGBTQI+ People in Namibia; Linus Kambeyo and Martha Nahole
- Chapter 9. Conceptual Clarity of Rape in Sotho-Tswana Language: Focus on People with Disability in Botswana; Macdelyn Mosalagae and Leslie S. Nthoi
- Chapter 10. E Seng Mo Ngwaneng, But on Who? The Problem of Selective Outrage and the “Unrapeable” Woman in Botswana; Portia T. Loeto
- Chapter 11. Our Names, Our Fears, Our Bodies: Survivorship and Recognition; Suha Gangopadhyay
- Conclusion Toward Decolonial Feminist Justice: Rape, Recognition, and the Futures We Must Build; Soma Chaudhuri
Soma Chaudhuri is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Co-Director of the Center for Gender in Global Context at Michigan State University, USA, where she heads the Global Research, Outreach and Engagement portfolio.
Portia T. Loeto is Gender Studies Lecturer at the University of Botswana and a former Postdoctoral Fellow at Center for Gender in Global Context and Department of Sociology at Michigan State University, USA.
Godisang Mookodi is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Botswana and a former Visiting Senior Scholar at Center for Gender in Global Context and Department of Sociology at Michigan State University, USA.