COUNTERING TEXTUAL VIOLENCE - ON THE CRITIQUE OF REPRESENTATION AND THE IMPORTANCE OF TEACHING ITS METHODS

I advocate the teaching and popularizing of a method of textual analys is 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, intertextuality, and rhetorical figures - my aim is a political one. I consider sexual violence and racism, as acted-out realities, to be de eply embedded in longstanding, continuously inscribed cultural attitud es which are textually transmitted. Thus they are naturalised, made in to the inevitable, the normal, the natural. I argue for a concept of d iscourse which contains the linguistic, the cultural, the socio-politi cal and the material, as undivided, as being part and parcel of the sa me regime. Feminist critique of representation is not limited to certa in 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 c omments on his 'violent' photographs. The second text is Thea Beckman' s influential children's book Het wonder van Frieswijck.