textual harassment

textual harassment

English

Etymology

Blend of textual +‎ sexual harassment. The term textual harassment is from Mary Jacobus, 'Is There a Woman in This Text?' New Literary History 14 (Fall 1982): 117-41."[1]

Noun

textual harassment (uncountable)

1. Sexual harassment in writing
   • 1991, Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh, page 113:

     She places the textual harassment experienced by all women writers at her own disposal as evidence of her grace, and hence her authority.

   • 2002, Tara Brabazon, Ladies Who Lunge: Celebrating Difficult Women, page 104:

     Moneypenny reminding Bond of his responsibilities and limitations curtails the textual harassment of the character.

2. Aggressive, distorting literary or textual criticism
   • 1991, Jan Gorak, The Making of the Modern Canon: Genesis and Crisis of a Literary Idea, page 24:

     Iraneus contrasts the unity and integrity of these writings with the distorted, contextless citations of the Gnostics. He describes the code of textual harassment that allows these heretics to chip away at the Scriptures, […].

   • 1998, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of, page 149:

     The process is one of systematic misconstruction, a kind of textual harassment.

   • 2002, Peter Barry, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, page 72:

     So the deconstructionist practises what has been called textual harassment or oppositional reading, reading with the aim of unlasking internal contradictions or inconsistencies in the text.

3. Sexual harassment using text messages; compare textual intercourse, sexting.

References

1. Elaine Showalter (1985). The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and Theory, page 16

• Macmillan Word of the Day archive: textual harassment