Re-writing Women as Victims

From Theory to Practice

María José Gámez Fuentes, Sonia Núñez Puente, Emma Gómez Nicolau, María José Gámez Fuentes, Sonia Núñez Puente, Emma Gómez Nicolau

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781032087023
• eBook ISBN: 9781351043588
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume critically analyses political strategies, civil society initiatives and modes of representation that challenge the conventional narratives of women in contexts of violence. It deepens into the concepts of victimhood and agency that inform the current debate on women as victims.

The volume opens the scope to explore initiatives that transcend the pair abuser–victim and explore the complex relations between gender and violence, and individual and collective accountability, through politics, activism and cultural productions in order to seek social transformation for gender justice. In innovative and interdisciplinary case studies, it brings attention to initiatives and narratives that make new spaces possible in which to name, self-identify, and resignify the female political subject as a social agent in situations of violence. The volume is global in scope, bringing together contributions ranging from India, Cambodia or Kenya, to Quebec, Bosnia or Spain. Different aspects of gender-based violence are analysed, from intimate relationships, sexual violence, military contexts, society and institutions.

Re-writing Women as Victims: From Theory to Practice will be a key text for students, researchers and professionals in gender studies, political sciences, sociology and media and cultural Studies. Activists and policy makers will also find its practical approach and engagement with social transformation to be essential reading.

1 Reframing women’s victimisation

Challenges and possibilities

María José Gámez Fuentes, Sonia Núñez Puente and Emma Gómez Nicolau

The intention to elaborate this volume arises in response to the communicative and political shifts experienced because of new phenomena involving civil mobilisation and participation aimed at subverting the hegemonic conceptualisation of women as victims in contexts of violence. Examining both the shifts and the phenomena that have given rise to them is vital when it comes to comprehending the current situation and the socio-political climate of the years to come. For, there are likely to be changes in the trends of political and communicative practices known until now.

Understanding gender relationships and the gender dimension in the global order forces us to speak of violence. It also obliges us to study the situations and contexts in which violence is used against women. However, dealing with the social structure and systemic logics which sustain violence has often portrayed women as victims without capacity for agency. In fact, the theory on vulnerability and agency has been presented as an oxymoron (Butler et al., 2016) according to which the condition of victim prevented individual and collective agency (Banet-Weiser, 2018; Bracke, 2016). Fortunately, social dynamics go beyond a static definition of reality: In the processes of the struggle for power, representation and the power of representation, we encounter initiatives that display non-hegemonic instances of agency by women and feminist organisations, support communities and independent movements that strive for transforming the patriarchal matrix of recognition. These all have the will and the capacity to report, rewrite and retell established gender roles, naturalised accounts of reality and sclerotised subjectivities, in an attempt to prevent the institutions and the state from monopolising the definition of the situation.

It is from that perspective that this volume is conceived: To question the notion of victim and victimisation and explore the agencies arising from individual and collective spaces and embodiments, far removed from the classical notion of the sovereign subject (Alcoff, 1988; Benhabib, 2005; Flax, 1987), capable, rational, autonomous and placed at the centre of the story. For, from this point of view, victims do not have the capacity to act and neither do vulnerable or suppressed collectives. However, according to Butler, not only is vulnerability compatible with agency, but in fact it is a condition which offers the possibility of forms of agency and action (Butler, 2015, Butler and Athanasiou, 2013). Thus, while neoliberal literature on empowerment (Banet-Weiser, 2018; Gill, 2016) suggests that women and vulnerable subjects can abandon this state and become strong subjects through technologies of the self (Foucault, 2008), our proposal involves an in-depth study of the opposite, namely how through both daily and activist practices it is possible to act to resist power despite structural subjections.

In any study of the practical agency of a subordinate, vulnerable or vulnerabilised subject, there is a more or less explicit analysis of the violent structure exploiting, marginalising and harming that subject. In every action of subordinate, vulnerable or vulnerabilised subjects, there is a definition of a political subject that reacts, resists or resides in the subjections. For that reason, this volume is based on the consideration that the global disadvantage of women in a gender order (that transmits violence against them and attempts to position them as mere victims) does not imply passivity, a lack of action or acceptance of the situation. Instead, the position of subordination may channel social transformation processes which alter, subvert and challenge the violence, although not without resistance. Reference is also made to the agency actions undertaken in order to “cope” better in an oppressive system, either because they generate spaces outside the system of domination or because they redefine the identities which have been imposed upon them (Martinez, 2019, p. 4).

Attempting to reinterpret the female victim, therefore, implies a more complex understanding of the individual and collective actions carried out. Actually, it urges us to mapping nodes by means of which the situation of victimisation fuses with processes of identity construction, subjectivity and political action. It also involves leaving to one side Western-centric narratives and considerations (Adlbi Sibai, 2017) which measure the political capacity of the subjects based on Western cultural standards (economic, liberal, etc.) and which have led to the systematic revictimisation of women from the South. Finally yet importantly, it involves reviewing or questioning many of the public policies implemented as strategies which will “save” women from their situation of exploitation, oppression or violence, and the cultural artefacts that reproduce that saviour-centred approach, since safety always emanates from the state-sanctioned narrative.

Consequently, the scope of the volume Rewriting Women as Victims: From Theory to Practice interpellates three areas of work in order to analyse those spaces in politics, activism and cultural representations which question the traditional attributions given to female victims: Generally considered to be voiceless, in a situation of dominance or who have even developed a false consciousness according to which they do not even know that they are victims. This will enable us to explore not only the agencies produced, but also the possibilities for social transformation.

In this regard, it is worth clarifying which concept of victim we are using. Following the classic study by Galtung (1990), direct violence cannot be understood without taking into consideration the interrelationship between direct, structural and cultural violence. As such, the frameworks of violence are applied intersectionally by means of numerous axes of oppression. From this perspective, vulnerable subjects, subjects who are victims, are no longer the others and, following Butler (2004), precariousness is not only associated with the fringes, but instead affects reality in its entirety. It becomes the norm. Vulnerability becomes part of social nature, even though it is not distributed equally (Butler, 2004; Butler and Athanasiou, 2013). While precariousness is ontological in all lives, which are subject to sudden disappearance, “precarity” is the political condition which affects certain groups of people who suffer from a lack of economic and social support networks and who are more exposed to harm, violence and death (Butler, 2014). We, therefore, understand that the concept of the female victim corresponds, hegemonically, to a narrative of violence enunciated from a violent recognition (Butler, 2005) which reproduces a female identity associated with injurability (Butler and Athanasiou, 2013). In this, violence is presented as something which occurs at random, which is natural and thus inalterable and which is even a consequence of the victim’s irresponsibility, ignoring the structural subjection of the subjects.

It is for this reason that from our perspective, the challenge lies in devising practices and discourses which provide an alternative testimony to the place of the female subject faced with violence. Moreover, there is a need for researching into communication strategies for subjective activation that are not based on compassionate images or stories about subjects who are reified or objectified in their role as victims. In that respect, the contributions in this volume reflect on political practices which envisage the capacity for individual and collective action from a position of vulnerability; activist practices which attempt to subvert both the realities and the narratives, redefining the figure of the female victim; and communicative practices capable of recognising the victim subject as the other in its ethical dimension, that is to say whose logic of communicative interaction addresses, on the one hand, the impossibility of fully comprehending the experience of the victim (despite the force of the totalising embrace of hegemonic narratives) and, on the other, the structure of the very scene of address that the narratives generate (Butler, 2005).

Going beyond approaches based on the recognition/discovery of the female victim and the origin, causes and/or characteristics of her trauma lead us to question vulnerability and violence from the perspective of response-ability, understood as the capacity for response and responsibility in the response. In order to revise this conceptualisation and the theoretical, political and cultural possibilities which it could open, we turn to the theoretical concept of “ethical witnessing” of trauma studies (Kaplan, 2005; Oliver, 2001, 2004), in which responsibility is understood from the ethical commitment regarding how we articulate our response in light of the precariousness of the other. This implies a change of direction with regard to responsibility. Commitment is then linked to the search for answers which revert the structural conditions which generate vulnerability, heal the damage and rewrite our collective memory. This takes us necessarily to enter into dialogue with Butler’s notion of accountability (Butler, 2005), since in her oeuvre accountability acquires a collective dimension that takes into account the question of interdependence. From that perspective, giving account means to point out and expose the political, social and cultural dynamics that precarize us as subjects.

From the theoretical and political commitment above, the volume is divided into three sections which present the axes from which new means of representing female victims in contexts of violence are discussed. In the section on politics, the articles present some of the main challenges facing public policies and the social analysis of women’s victimhood. First, the chapter by Cristina Peñamarín Beristain and Diana Fernández Romero entitled “Women survivors of sexist abuse in Spain: The role of affects of proximity and recognition on the way out” deals with the damage and recovery processes of women who survive gender violence. The analysis of the logics of interdependence and recognition of others in the construction of subjectivity is of particular relevance. To that end, the authors analysed 26 in-depth interviews of women who suffered gender violence, and this rich empirical material has enabled them to identify the fundamental role of the processes of witnessing and bearing witness in the evolution of these women.

Emma Dolan’s contribution in the chapter entitled “The ‘comfort women’ apologies: Gender victimhood and the politics of grievability” aims principally to expose the ways in which political acts which initially sought gender justice in fact maintained and prolonged the gender order. This was the case with the Japanese state’s apologetic act towards the Korean state for the Japanese army’s use of Korean women as forced prostitutes during the war. The author highlights how victims are arranged in order of importance in this process, establishing the hegemonic model of recognition of the “woman-victim” which fits the feminine mandate: innocent, forced and damaged. In particular, it is worth highlighting her analysis of nationalist policies regarding the recognition of victims.

The chapter entitled “Gender, agency and the construction of a rape victim: The ICTY and the prosecution of sexual violence in Bosnia-Hercegovina” also deals with the subject of gender violence in the context of war. Louis Tozer analyses the paradoxes of the interpretation and prosecution of rape as a war crime. The text examines the process by means of which the mass rape of Bosnian Muslim women went on to constitute a specific criminal offence for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The text discusses the idea of rape as a weapon of war based on the principle that the rape of women from a particular community demoralises the male fighters under the principle of the appropriation of trauma. It is an idea which, in the case study, is reinforced by the patriarchal myths regarding Muslim women and men from an orientalist viewpoint. One of the most noteworthy elements of the chapter is the analysis of how the prosecution of rape as a crime against humanity and preventing women from testifying in court not only led to a reified interpretation of rape but also the negation of the agency of women who were unable to bear witness to the reality they had experienced.

In the chapter entitled “Women’s resistance in violent settings: Infrapolitical strategies in Brazil and Colombia”, Anne-Marie Veillette and Priscyll Anctil Avoine analyse the meaning of the concept of resistance in contexts where there is a high level of violence, oppression and forms of marginalisation. Though qualitative fieldwork undertaken in Brazil and Colombia, they analyse from a feminist and decolonial perspective the practices of resistance which go beyond collective action and which, contrary to the hegemonic narrative on resistance, take place in the private sphere and are expressed through common practice. This analysis deals with the agency which arises from a position of vulnerability and which the authors situate in the framework of infrapolitics. Finally, the chapter by Olga Jurasz and Natalia Szablewska entitled “Towards transformative gender equality: The importance of addressing economic violence against women in Cambodia” deals with the importance of addressing economic violence as a fundamental form of political violence. The role of women as activists is analysed through the protests and actions they have headed regarding land dispossession and forced evictions, given their importance in order to guarantee economic and housing rights. The authors investigate how the empowerment of communities is undertaken through the fight for redistribution rights in the face of the deepest structural violence.

The section on activism deals with the communicative practices that, within the framework of activism, propose discourse or innovative practices, which challenge the hegemonic frameworks from which female victims are discerned. The chapter by Wanjiku Mukabi Kabira and Lanoi Maloiy entitled “Feminist and grassroots activism rewriting women as victims: Kenyan women’s untold story” deals with the role of women and women’s movements in the Mau Mau Uprising. Concretely, it explores how it helped to organise women collectively and effectively in political terms in order to resist the patriarchal system during the struggle for independence and the post-independence period in Kenya. The chapter also focuses on the possibilities for resistance based on the participation of women in policy review and constitutional change, in particular, with the strength of grassroot women’s organisations. The rewriting of African women with regard to their capacity for agency is of particular interest, questioning deeply rooted stereotypes of African women as victims.

In the chapter entitled “Collective action and organisation against gender violence in Spain: When victims became activists”, Maria Martinez presents a series of questions regarding the emergence of activism among victims of gender violence. It is innovative how the author changes the emphasis in the approach towards the concept of victim, given that her study goes beyond considering activism for victims to focus the discussion on activism by victims. It is, thus, necessary to analyse the mainstream discourses on gender violence by setting them against discourses articulated by victims that develop into a series of essential repertoires of action in order to redefine the category of victim. The chapter by Virginia Villaplana Ruiz entitled “Transnational feminist activism to reframe femicide: The case of #Niunamenos and #Vivasnosqueremos” offers a critical look at the construction of femicide discourses in network culture. The author uses the cases of hashtags originated in Argentina and Mexico to analyse the communicative phenomena embodied through the transnational feminist movement against violence as a significant axis of cyberactivism for citizen participation. For that purpose, Villaplana employs video material and Twitter activism archives to research the challenges of hegemonic frameworks in which gender, vulnerability and digital resistance can be identified.

The nuances of digital discourses with regard to activism are also the focus of the chapter by Jessie A. Bustillos Morales entitled “Materialising resistance against rape culture: The phenomenon of SlutWalks”. Bustillos offers a complex analysis of online activism, using as case study the phenomenon of SlutWalks against rape culture. Research into affective publics and how these engage with the co-option of online content is carried out. Finally, the section on activism ends with a chapter by Rahat Imran entitled “Mukhtaran Mai’s transformation from gang-rape victim to the feminist face of glamour: Transcending notions of tribal honour, gender and class in Pakistan”. Imran focuses on the case study of the gang rape of Mukhtaran Mai in Pakistan in order to analyse the fight against “honour rape” and the difficulties this entails in the Pakistani legal system. There is a discussion of the association of resistance against “honour rape” with various interrelated factors from patriarchal, cultural, socio-religious and socio-political perspectives. This allows the author to go beyond the tribal notion of honour and approach the concept of resistance exemplified in the mediatic and global acknowledgement of Mukhtaran Mai.

The section on cultural narratives is structured around proposals which present alternative responses to the dominant narratives of women as victims. In this regard, the chapter by Laura Favaro and Rosalind Gill entitled “‘Pump up the positivity’: Neoliberalism, affective entrepreneurship and the victimhood/agency debate” analyses how narratives on victimhood are constructed based on the logics of positive psychology. From this perspective, the authors explore the gendered nature of neoliberalism, focusing on the subjects’ capacity for self-care. Based on this analysis, Favaro and Gill look into the proc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Reframing women’s victimisation: challenges and possibilities
• PART I Politics
• PART II Activism
• PART III Cultural narratives
• Index