“Wrong Problem, Wrong Solutions”: Sexual Violence, Neoliberal Universities, and the Affects of Institutional Betrayal

Abstract

This thesis explores the affective and political currents of campus rape culture. Paying particular attention to neoliberalism’s transformation of Canadian higher education in recent decades, the author describes a “marketized” campus environment in which school reputation is frequently prioritized above student well-being, as disclosures of sexual violence impact university’s standing and enrolment. The author additionally describes how neoliberal discourses of risk and responsibility serve to download the responsibility for social harms from institutions to individuals. Thus, in the case of campus sexual assault, students bear the burden of preventing and managing the aftermath of violence, in a setting where their disclosures may be denied or ignored. Drawing on the lived experiences of student victims/ survivors who sought support from their universities, the project examines how institutional betrayal comes to bear on their lives and bodies. Institutional betrayal refers to the harm a trusted institution causes to the student, over and above their initial experiences of violence. This project’s participants describe campus cultures in which sexual violence was normalized or ignored; school staff and services that blamed or punished whistleblowers; and institutional policies and practices that caused lasting emotional harm. The author argues that Canadian higher educational institutions offer harmful “solutions” to victim/survivors, in part because of their ahistorical and apolitical conception of the problem of sexual violence, and in part because of the market orientation of the higher education “industry.” Bringing survivor testimony into conversation with feminist political theory and theories of affect, the author argues that institutional betrayal and neoliberal rape culture are affective phenomena, with social, psychic, and embodied components.