Embodied Truths and Credible Traumas: Navigating Hybrid Legal Knowledge Formations of Rape (completed)

About the project

In my thesis, I investigate the public assemblage of rape as it is constituted by expert knowledge in legal and medical institutions and how victims of rape navigate through expert discourses, institutional responses and accompanying societal expectations. Firstly, I do a discourse analysis of legal decisions in rape cases. I focus on how evidence is constituted, as well as how common knowledge and common sense is invoked in legal decisions regarding rape. Secondly, I do a discourse analysis of qualitative interviews with victims of rape. I argue that rape has today turned into a public concern in which victims’ experience is conditioned by expert knowledge that creates directions and guidance of how to handle the rape. Expert knowledge in terms of forensic knowledge privileges the body’s ability to tell the truth of a rape claim. Similarly, the body is targeted in therapeutic interventions. The victim’s body is therefore central stage in the public assemblage of rape.

 

Further reading on the Norwegian website

Published May 23, 2018 2:24 PM - Last modified May 12, 2020 9:11 AM