Countering textual violence: On the critique of representation and the importance of teaching its methods

Abstract

I advocate the teaching and popularizing of a method of textual analysis which seems indispensable to a feminist and anti-racist critique of representation. Although this method originates in literary analysis and focuses on concepts such as the narrating instance, focalisation, inter-textuality, and rhetorical figures—my aim is a political one. I consider sexual violence and racism, as acted-out realities, to be deeply embedded in longstanding, continously inscribed cultural attitudes which are textually transmitted. Thus they are naturalised, made into the inevitable, the normal, the natural. I argue for a concept of discourse which contains the linguistic, the cultural, the socio-political and the material, as undivided, as being part and parcel of the same regime. Feminist critique of representation is not limited to certain privileged bodies of texts: It is the textual process itself which is analysed, be it pornography, newspapers, ‘high literature’ or film. I deal with two examples: the first one is a (newspaper) text on the Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken, including van der Elsken's own comments on his ‘violent’ photographs. The second text is Thea Beckman's influential children's book Het wonder van Frieswijck.