Violence communicates differently

This chapter begins to conceptualize sexual violence as a series of material–discursive intra-actions. It does so by drawing upon a case study at a university regarded for having some of the most effective sexual violence policies in the United States, the pseudonymous Public Research University (PRU). An analysis of the systems for reporting rape and other assaults at PRU shows that these processes rely on representationalist frameworks that have problematic raced and gendered consequences. The reporting system allows PRU to overlook lots of violence. Moreover, marginalized members of the university do a disproportionate amount of the labor to run the system. The chapter relies on the feminist new materialist concept of diffraction to show that reports to Title IX officers are not mere descriptions of sexual violence, but the outcome of material–discursive processes. The chapter advances a material turn by using violence as a focal point for theory that is neither wholly constructivist nor wholly realist.