1. If you don't like this kind of discussion don't read this post it's discussing skeevy shit.
2. Okay, now we can begin.
It's a very Slaughterhouse-Five-esque catch-22. Using rape in literature as a device, or even just depicting it can almost glorify the experience, turning it weirdly sexual, the same way war becomes weirdly glorious under the lens of literature. And like war, it's a horrible disturbing thing that needs to be addressed, but in doing so it almost always becomes dramatic and interesting instead of as awful as it actually is.
Adding to the fact is how rapey a good portion of normally sexualized images in mainstream culture can be--making actual depictions of rape resonating with things we're supposed to consider okay.
All of this is making me a little bit leery of the use of rape in Kindred as a metaphor for slavery. While a useful one to make-- both take the agency of someone away from them and turn them into something for someone else to use-- I'm so used to waiting for rape to be used as a cheap means for drama and BDSM fanservice. Hopefully this book won't bend to that cliche.
I don't see anything "metaphorical" about rape in _Kindred_. It's pretty literal. In class I had pointed out that, in this novel as in history, rape is central to the logic of slavery, not just some occasional aberration, something shameful done by "bad" slaveowners. Not in a metaphorical way, though--it's horrifically literal, as an illustration of what it *means* to assert possession and ownership over another's body. Rape is a logical extension of the slavery dynamic, and Butler includes it to show that it's part and parcel of the system on which the nation was built. As a descendant of the child produced by such a situation (and Dana is far from alone in this category--that's the point, I think), this is something she has to confront in the novel, to face her great-great-great-grandfather as a rapist. There are many Americans, "white" and "black," who would find similar branches in their family trees.
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