The end of consent: an exhausted reading of a concept

Consent is widely upheld as the cornerstone of sexual violence prevention and is often also positioned as the precondition and guarantor of sexual pleasure, connection, and intimacy. Yet, there are well-documented limitations of consent, including its fantasies of rational autonomy, communicative transparency, and the interpersonal contract as primary models for intimate relationality. These problems have led activists and researchers to offer many revisions of the concept over the last few decades.In the revised models, consent is positioned as either simple (‘just ask’), or complex (e.g. checklists, acronyms, flowcharts), or requires thorough self-knowledge, or is redefined completely in order to serve as a container for other practices and values. We show how these revived consent models still ultimately flatten complexity, recast harm as miscommunication, and blame victims for systemic failures. This article offers a methodological experiment in exhausted reading: the goal is to generate a solidarity of frustration about consent as the basis of a different orientation to sexual politics.