From rape as a tool of terror in situations of war and armed-conflict, to the largely unchecked epidemic of sexual assault on and off college campuses, “rape” finds its way into our collective political and social (and popular and legal and cultural and aesthetic) consciousness.  In a study that is exhaustive, intimate, and exacting, Sameena Mulla’s The Violence of Care: Rape Victims, Forensic Nurses, and Sexual Assault Intervention (New York University Press, 2014) takes up the narrative and embodied dimensions of sexual assault and its afterlife in Baltimore. Mulla tells a story of “fragile relationships” across multiple domains and crafts a highly original account of the affective, representational, and abstracting elements which form the forensic inventory of sexual assault.  We are happy to present a lively and critical exchange, and look forward the discussions generated by this second Book Forum. The entire forum is also available as a single pdf here and is embedded below.

Comments on Mulla, Sameena. The Violence of Care: Rape Victims, Forensic Nurses, and Sexual Assault Intervention. New York University Press, 2014.

An Awkward Relationship: The Case of Feminism and Nursing
Christine Labuski

Critical Care
Julie Livingston

The Violence of Reductionism
Gethin Rees

 Response to comments:

Care confounded: the ethnography of intervention into violence
Sameena Mulla