Du corps-victime au corps-vengeur: de la fiction comme une arme

In this article, I analyze how two French female writers, Virginie Despentes ( Baise-Moi) and Marcia Burnier ( Les Orageuses), subvert the topos of rape and revenge by taking it out of the frame of pointless violence and hypersexualization of women to make it more universal and political. By embracing the codes of the genre in order to better transgress them, these writers are reinventing the genre. By showing how the female body can become a subject of desire and an actor of violence rather than an object of desire or a victim of violence, the two authors offer a more in-depth reflection on what rape and revenge are, and reveal in their novels the importance of friendship, sisterhood and mutual assistance between women to rebuild and reconnect with themselves after sexual assault.