Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of narrated silence among rape survivors from the Bosnian war to argue how supposedly unique survivors’ responses have in fact empowered the understanding of sexuality and existing sexual scripts. By using excerpts from scholarly monographs, novels, and feature and documentary movies, the author displays the universal and standardized formats for how we voice, discuss, and think of silence after war rapes across different genres. The continuum of narrated silences reduces survivors to speechless and voiceless spectacles of victimization, which contributes to the preservation of a historic legacy of sexual scripts and the normalization of gender-based violence, abuse, and nonconsensual sexual intercourse among the post-war generations.

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