Contesting Rape Narratives: Medicalisation and 'The Rape Victim'

Using a Foucaultian 'toolbox', I am to analyse the process through which the 'rape victim' - in it's current morphology- has come to be culturally identifiable. Ultimately, this genealogical project seeks to locate the discursive shifts in history that made this understanding of victimhood and its corollary with medical understandings of mental 'ill-health' possible. Through this, i am interested in examining the subjectivating nature of the medical professions' 'inspecting gaze', which not only produces the 'rape victim' (and associated acts of victimhood) but is also reproduced by the women themselves as they come to self-identify as, and perform the position of a 'victim of rape'. Starting in the 19th century, this research culminates with a textual analysis of interviews and online forums, where I attempt to dismantle the 'regimes of truth' that privileges the clinician's rather than the women's views of their own circumstances. Ultimately, I attempt to challenge the processes through which women become their diagnoses - in the hope that this might provide more opportunities for respite and freedom from "victimhood'.