Alisa Kessel, "Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence" (Oxford UP, 2025)

About this episode

Alisa Kessel discusses her book on rape culture and the political dimensions of sexual violence.

Political theorist Alisa Kessel (University of Puget Sound) has an important and impressive new book, Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence. Kessel’s research grew out of her work on questions of consent and how consent is embedded within the social contract structure. Initially the plan for the research was to critique this concept of “rape culture” which had found its way into popular discourse as well as academic work and was somewhat unclear in terms of application and understanding. Kessel notes in the book and in our conversations that her thinking about the idea of rape culture owes a great deal to black feminists who had been writing about and discussing the underlying issue at the heart of rape culture, which is not just about violence against women, but more broadly about the political, societal, and cultural dimensions of domination, victimhood, and human value. Rape Fantasies develops this understanding and provides fascinating examples of this intersectional concept. One of the key claims of the book is that sexual violence is not accidental, it is not necessarily based on physical urges that just cannot be controlled; it is, instead…

People in this episode

Host: Marshall Poe

Guest: Alisa Kessel

Topics covered

• rape culture
• sexual violence
• political domination
• consent
• intersectionality

Keywords

• rape culture
• sexual violence
• political act
• consent
• black feminists

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Puget Sound, Oxford UP

Books & works: Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence

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