“Systemic, Transhistoric, Institutionalized, and Legitimized Antipathy”: Epistemic and Sexual Violence in A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing and Milkman

Abstract

This article concerns the interrelations of epistemic and physical gendered violence in two award-winning contemporary Irish novels, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing (2013) and Milkman (2018) by Eimear McBride and Anna Burns, respectively. It argues that patriarchal naming power which defines women as sexual objects is inextricable from the physical violence featured in both texts. Using theories of violence and naming, it examines how, faced with a climate of constant and submerged sexual threat,“middle sister” (as the narrator is called) and“Girl” (the protagonist of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing) attempt to appropriate dominant patriarchal narratives to retain subjectivity in the face of violence. While “middle sister” comes to recognize and articulate the violence done to her, Girl’s internalization of violence leads to the annihilation of both self and body.