"Sexual Violence in Western Thought and Writing: Chaste Rape " focuses on rape scripts and narratives as informed by a sacrificial economy that grounds subjectivity and legitimizes community. In search of tutor texts to rethink these scripts and narratives, Victor J. Vitanza turns to the works of Kate Millett as well as the works of Andrea Dworkin, Susan Brownmiller, Virginia Woolf, and Sigmund Freud. Vitanza rethinks rape through a close examination of how sexual violence is a "pedagogy" that has become "canonized" in the form of "rape" stories. To rethink-reread-rewrite outside this economy, Vitanza combines the work of continental feminisms with philosophies on post-identities and on radical reconsideration of a community without community.

This book focuses on rape narratives as grounding for western thinking about community - from the polis to nation-states - specifically in cultures of thinking , reading , and writing . The author rethinks rape, or sexual violence, through a close examination of how rape is a pedagogy that has become canonized in the form of rape stories.