Seamus Heaney talked of poetry's responsibility to represent the "bloody miracle", the "terrible beauty" of atrocity; to create "something adequate". This article asks, what is adequate to the burning and eating of a nun and the murderous gang rape and evisceration of a medical student? It considers Njabulo Ndebele's…

While rape is ordinarily considered an invariable reality, Sharon Marcus argues that it is instead a cultural script, which casts women as victims and men as perpetrators. In imagining rape as a script, it may seem pertinent to suggest that the arts and performance have a role in its prevention. Performances can provide a forum to publicly reflect…

Elena Garro's one-act play "Los perros" (1958) confronts the difficult issue of sexual violence in rural Mexico, a problem that persists today. The characters struggle with the social reality of rape, alluding to the threat of sexual violence while avoiding addressing it directly. While words are granted an almost magical power in…