Bodies under Siege: Masculinity, Sexual Violence, and Power in Sarah Kane’s Blasted

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between masculinity, sexual violence, and power in Sarah Kane’s Blasted (1995), arguing that bodily vulnerability exposes the instability of identities founded on domination. Situating the play within In-Yer-Face theatre and its affinities with Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, it explores how explicit violence and disrupted dramatic form reveal connections between private abuse and political brutality. Through close textual analysis and engagement with critical scholarship, the paper traces Ian’s construction of heterosexual masculinity through misogyny, possessiveness, and homophobia, alongside its subsequent collapse under the Soldier’s violence. Ian’s violation undermines the assumption that heterosexual masculinity guarantees bodily autonomy and authority. Cate’s experience, meanwhile, shows that vulnerability can coexist with resistance, allowing agency to emerge amid coercion and suffering. The Soldier’s repetition of remembered atrocities illustrates how traumatic loss can perpetuate violence without absolving perpetrators of responsibility. The transformation of the hotel room into a war zone connects intimate coercion with military brutality through shared patterns of possession and bodily control. Finally, the paper considers how Kane’s representations of mutilation, hunger, and bodily exposure confront spectators with the ethical demands of witnessing suffering. It argues that the play’s theatrical extremity critiques gendered and political domination, positioning the body as a site where power is exercised, experienced, and destabilised.