On Conduplicatio And Diacope As Rhetorical Devices That Reemphasize The Reality of Rape’s Presence and Perverse Power In Chanel Miller’s VIS Statement
by Jocelyn Crawley
Male supremacy is not just an abstract ideology; it is a material system which adversely impacts the cognitive and somatic condition of women and girls on a daily basis. Pornography and prostitution are two of its many faces; the presence and pervasiveness of femicides as an integral aspect of daily life for female people all over the world display the cumulative, collective impact that patriarchy’s ubiquity has. While male supremacy manifests in multifariously necrotic ways, many–including myself–maintain that sexual assault is its most deleterious manifestation. To argue this is to suggest that the immediate and cumulative impact of sexual assault is both tangibly and abstractly (invisibly) egregious. Indeed, it is. Rape victim-survivors experience a plethora of long-standing somatic challenges, and this is part of the reason that sexual assault has been identified as a public health issue. Victim-survivors also grapple with abstract, invisible consequences that they should not have to engage as a result of being violated; these consequences include the ongoing attempt to reestablish a sense of subjectivity which involves conceptualizing the self as more than or other than a victim. To understand the depth and scope of the adverse impact that rape has on individuals, one need look no further than the Victim Impact Statements of survivors. Chanel Miller’s VIS, for example, includes a plethora of linguistic articulations which convey the depth and scope of degradation that she endured as a result of Brock Turner sexually assaulting her. In examining this VIS closely, the reader can locate the presence of multiple rhetorical structures in the text, including conduplicatio and diacope. Before examining the presence of conduplicatio and diacope in Miller’s text, let’s consider their definitions and examples that are germane to the topic of sexual assault.
Conduplicatio is a rhetorical strategy in which a key phrase or word from a sentence or clause repeats itself in the next clause or sentence; this rhetorical device arguably exists to reinforce a message, create a connection, or emphasize a central idea. Multiple examples of conduplicatio exist in Marge Piercy’s “Rape Poem,” including the repetition of the phrase “There is no difference…”:
There is no difference between being raped
And being pushed down a flight of cement steps
Except that the wounds also bleed inside.
There is no difference between being raped
And being run over by a truck
Except that afterward men ask if you enjoyed it.
Here, the repetition of the phrase “There is no difference” functions as a form of conduplicatio which enables the reader to draw important parallels between rape and bodily violence so that the somatic harms of sexual assault become glaringly evident.
Diacope is similar to conduplicatio in that it involves the repetition of words or phrases. However, with diacope, the repetition of the term or phrase transpires in a sequence during which another word is interposed between the repeated words (Diacope is therefore also uniquely germane to the reality of rape given the structure of sexual assault: the rapist interposes himself on the rape victim by inserting his penis into her vagina against her will). To paraphrase, diacope involves the repetition of a phrase or word broken up by one or several intervening terms. The term “diacope” is derived from the Greek, with the term diakopē meaning “a gash” or “a cut in two.” (This is distinct from the etymological underpinnings of conduplicatio, which comes from a Latin word meaning “folding together.”) An example of diacope from Marge Piercy’s “Rape Poem” transpires in the following stanza:
All it takes to cast a rapist is seeing your body
As jackhammer, as blowtorch, as machine gun.
All it takes is hating that body
Your own, your self, your muscle that softens to flab.
Here, diacope unfolds in the last line of the stanza, with the repetition of the word “your” being cut through with the words “own,” “self,” and “muscle.” I argue that this form of diacope works to underscore the role that rape plays in divorcing the victim from herself, with the terms “own,” “self,” and “muscle” functioning as allusions to the individual’s sense of subjectivity.
Once the feminist reader understands how the rhetorical strategies of conduplicatio and diacope function in rape poetry, she can begin to grasp how the rhetorical techniques operate within Chanel Miller’s Victim Impact Statement. Examples of conduplicatio abound in Miller’s VIS, but an example I find particularly germane to the issue of sexual assault’s multifariously deleterious harms is the following: “The night after it happened, he said he thought I liked it because I rubbed his back. A back rub. Never mentioned me voicing consent, never mentioned us speaking, a back rub” (3). Here, conduplicatio transpires twice. First, the phrase “a back rub” appears in two consecutive sentences, with the phrase pointing towards Brock Turner’s reinvention of reality to reflect that, rather than raping Chanel Miller, they engaged in consensual sex; presumably, the mode of expressing consent which made the sex consensual was Miller placing her hand or hands on Turner’s back. In this case, the harm Miller experiences is amplified by the erasure of her experience and the displacement of Turner’s culpability as rape is transformed into sex through his verbage. (Here, readers can locate but one of innumerable examples of the feminist understanding of how consent is the magical fairy dust that turns rape into sex.) In recognizing the presence of conduplicatio in these sentences, the feminist reader can grasp the depth and scope of Miller’s degradation. In addition to being subjected to the degradation of rape, she is subjected to the degradation of an individual erasing the reality of her sexual assault by asserting that his version of events–consensual sex–is the accurate framing of their somatic interaction.
The second example of conduplicatio in the aforementioned sentences transpires with the repetition of the phrase “Never mentioned.” In this case, the sentence fragment “Never mentioned me voicing consent, never mentioned us speaking, a back rub” underscores the lack of verbal consent involved in the “sex” which Turner claimed transpired between himself and Miller. The emphasis on what was never mentioned is important because it reminds us that nonverbal consent (the “back rub”) is an inefficient modality through which to ascertain whether an individual has actually agreed to engage in intercourse with another person. Additionally, the phrase “never mentioned” reemphasizes the central role that rhetoric plays in reemphasizing the reality of rape which Turner tries to displace; specifically, it is what Turner never mentions (verbal consent) which functions as evidence that consent was utterly absent from their “sex”ual encounter. In this case, the repetition of what was never mentioned functions as a rhetorical affect which underscores the absence of consent and thereby reinforces that rape, not sex, is what actually transpired between Miller and Turner.
Just as conduplicatio works to underscore the reality of rape while simultaneously conveying the audacity of male supremacy as it manifests in terms of a male both raping a woman and subsequently pretending that he did not, diacope functions to reveal the multiple horrors associated with the manifestation of sexual assault. One particularly significant demonstration of diacope transpires when Miller recalls the time she spends in a hospital following her subjection to Turner’s violence. In recalling a spatial element of her experience in the hospital, Miller notes that she was
“shuffled from room to room with a blanket wrapped around me, pine
needles trailing behind me, I left a little pile in every room I sat in. I was
asked to sign papers that said “Rape Victim” and I thought something has
really happened. My clothes were confiscated and I stood naked while the
nurses held a ruler to various abrasions on my body and photographed them (1).”
Here, diacope transpires with the enunciation of the phrase “room to room.” This enunciation enables the reader to grapple with the horrors of rape in context of Miller’s need to move through multiple spaces in order to address and resolve various aspects of her sexual assault. In one room, Miller’s identity is displaced as she is required to attach her name to the phrase “rape victim”; in this case, her identity becomes that of an individual who 1. has been raped and 2. is therefore a victim. This identity and identification exists antipodally to the mode of subjectivity Miller maintained prior to experiencing somatic violation and the cognitive dissolution that resulted from it. In reflecting on affixing her signature to papers which classify her as a rape victim, Miller asserts that the act induces a thought: something has happened. What has happened, I posit, is that her existence as an individual possessing an identity marked by agency and assertion has been negated. In addition to (not) existing in a room where her identity has been erased, Miller presumably moves to other rooms which remind her of her (non)existence as a rape victim. In these other rooms, her clothes are taken from her and she stands naked in front of nurses; here, identity assasination transpires as the nurses observe a body which has been subjected to sexual assault. The sexual assault says (or attempts to say) that the body subjected to the assault does not belong to the person in the body; the sexual assault says (or attempts to say) that the body subjected to the assault belongs to the individual who exacted the assault. Additionally, the sexual assault says (or attempts to say) that the person who was assaulted does not exist as an independently thinking being because her body is not her own. Therefore, the sexual assault says (or attempts to say) that the victim does not exist. Moving into a room in which one’s clothes are confiscated and in which nurses observe all the things a raped body is saying says that your nonexistence is a material reality that can be analyzed by other individuals after an individual brings that nonexistence into being by violating your body and thereby treating your will and volition as if they do not exist.
In addition to conveying the role that sexual assault plays in devolving somatic and cognitive existence into the realm of nonexistence, diacope functions to reveal the role the body plays in enunciating resistance to the pernicious work of rape within Miller’s Victim Impact Statement. This rhetorical process transpires when Miller conveys how her stomach responded to the reality of her rape during her stay in the hospital. In discussing her stomach’s speech, Miller writes “My brain was talking my gut into not collapsing. Because my gut was saying, help me, help me” (1). Here, the feminist reader locates diacope unfolding as the words “help” are kept apart with the word “me.” In this case, the gut is asking Miller for assistance in the process of remaining alive, with this biological work being compromised by the necrotic import that Turner’s violence has on her body. The gut thus enunciates the harm that has transpired and attempts to attain help so that the subjectivity (agency, vitality, functionality) that Miller presumably maintained prior to being raped can be restored. The loss of subjectivity and the attempt to restore it is underscored with the repetition of the word “me.” Thus just as Miller’s identity loss is made evident through conduplicatio and its signification of Turner’s attempt to erase the aspect of her identity which is capable of asserting one’s own experience, diacope enables its own reading of identity erasure; in the latter context, the stomach speaks about and against the attempts to negate Miller’s subjectivity. Additionally, Miller’s movement from room to room itself is a metaphorical reference to her loss of subjectivity. Rather than existing in a room of her own, she is moving from one space to another within a hospital where strangers are assiduously examining the raped body which, like the rooms she moves through, symbolizes that she does not belong to herself.
One issue that surfaces in context of reading a VIS–or any text about sexual assault–is whether the reader is engaging the text eisegetically. To interpret a text eisegetically means to read one’s own preconceived notions, biases, and ideas into or onto it. This interpretive approach is distinct from engaging the writer’s intended meaning. In imposing one’s personal beliefs or axiological framework onto a text, the reader runs the risk of limiting her epistemological framework to preexisting and/or subjective ideas regarding reality. Some might argue that to locate specific rhetorical devices in Miller’s VIS is to read eisegetically, supposing that certain formal structures were intentionally incorporated into the text by the writer/speaker. Yet this is not what reading conduplicatio/diacope into Miller’s VIS involves. Reading conduplicatio/diacope as key aspects of the VIS means that these rhetorical structures exist in the text irrespective of whether the writer intentionally, strategically incorporated them into the work or not. To see that they are there means that one can see how the language that is organized around interrogating and understanding rape takes on unique forms which make the necrotic, deleterious effects of sexual assault more glaringly evident. It is not, however, to say that Miller intentionally inserted these rhetorical structures into the text for the purpose of communicating anything.
As male supremacy continues to manifest its ugly reign as the ruling religion of the planet, many people will remain inundated in a realm of cognitive acedia which resists engaging in resistance to patriarchy and its pernicious effects as long as one is not subjected to its most nocuous impacts. This, I argue, is the dead wrong approach which enables the patriarchy to keep producing metaphorical (psychic) and material (somatic) deaths of women all over the planet. In addition to committing to awareness of patriarchy and its necrotic effects, we need to remain committed to caring about the wrongness of multifarious female deaths.. Real care, I argue, consists of perpetual acts of dissidence (including the production of radical writing and commitment to reading radical works) as well as ongoing disloyalty to patriarchy, with this approach manifesting in context of a radical politics and praxis which places primacy on identifying with the rape victim and withholding sympathy for and emotional attachment to the rapist.
Jocelyn Crawley is a radical feminist who places primacy on analyzing and exploring rape and sexual assault as key aspects of male supremacy.