Feminist scholars disagree about survivor narratives and their ability to inform the issue of rape. The question is: what is real? Does a survivor narrative constitute the “real” experience or does the constructed narrative version itself become the “real” experience? How are these experiences dissociative for the performers (actual rape survivors who transmit their own experiences) and the audience? Framing trauma “realistically” creates an expectancy, an interchange between the audience and the rape narrative. Together, the framing trauma stories “anticipate a dialogue between what have historically been perceived as antagonistic categories and traditions, namely the materialist ‘real’ (historical reality) and the psychoanalytic ‘Real’ (that
