Vergogna. Considerazioni globali sulla violenza sessuale

by Joanna Bourke

Quella di Joanna Bourke è la prima vera analisi globale sulla violenza sessuale, nel tempo e nello spazio; un'analisi che è anche un invito all'azione per eliminare questo flagello dalle nostre società. Tale obiettivo, però, non potrà essere raggiunto senza tenere conto della complessità del fenomeno, nella consapevolezza che la primaria attenzione alle vittime non può prescindere dai diversi contesti culturali, con uno sguardo rivolto non solo alla discriminazione sessuale e ai pregiudizi razziali, ma anche agli effetti combinati di sesso, genere, etnia, classe, casta, religione, generazione, disabilità.

Genres: Feminism, Gender, Womens

320 pages, Paperback

Published March 10, 2023

About the author

Joanna Bourke (born 1963 in New Zealand) is an historian and professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London.

Reviews

[Slestein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bourke is a leading academic historian of sexual violence, and this is another extremely valuable contribution from her. Unlike her influential earlier monograph "Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present," this book has a strong contemporary focus and a global perspective. The book rejects universalizing, transhistorical, and naturalizing perspectives on sexual violence, instead using an approach developed from radical feminist intersectionality to examine local particularities while also paying close attention to general, and even global, similarities.

Those familiar with her formidable bibliography on the subject will recognize many of the themes, topics, and preoccupations here, but I learned a lot of new things as well. The depth of research, case studies, and theoretical perspectives (including, I was glad to see, some deep queer theory) is truly impressive, though this also faces some of the common challenges of global history--how can you craft a project that is truly global? Is it really possible to write a genuinely global history on this difficult topic?

The book is clearly intended for non-academic readers, and I found it very accessible and would recommend it to any reader ready for such difficult material. It is of course a brutal read, but the text is far from hopeless. The book develops a theoretical approach for a broad leftist, feminist anti-rape solidarity and activism, ending with a chapter that imagines a rape-free world. Perhaps utopian--she writes that some of her friends even found her goals naive--but moving to read from someone who has studied this topic so deeply and must have many, many reasons to despair. More narrowly, I found the study inspiring for thinking about my own historical research and writing. This is the very last book I read in 2025; I actually finished it on Jan. 1, 2026. A bracing message and challenge to begin this year with. I think she gives us some truly valuable tools that can help us improve our future.