Legal decisions on rape trials as part of a pedagogy of behaviour

Abstract

The present article investigates the pedagogical role played by the discourse of legal decisions on rape trials. This analysis owes a lot to the work of Michel Foucault, in special to his book Vigiar e punir (Discipline and punish), which traces the evolution of criminal justice systems from Medieval torture to Enlightenment’s punishment to modern discipline. Rape trials involve both punishment and discipline; their punitive and disciplinary aspects are addressed not only at the defendant but equally at the victim. Like the defendant, the victim is also judged during the trial (even if by different standards) and, if found guilty of ‘inappropriate’ behaviour (e.g. promiscuity, unfaithfulness, ‘bitchiness’, drinking), her heart, her thoughts, her will and her inclinations must expiate her actions. Legal decisions on cases of rape exercise a dual level of power: they represent legal power (the power to judge and punish), but they also exert a micro power over the body and the sexuality of women, establishing appropriate and inappropriate forms of female social and sexual behaviour. Rape trials represent one of the disciplinary procedures through which conventional femininity is constituted and reconstituted, developed and resisted in society (Lees, 1997).