Description
Book SynopsisFor the true exercise of citizenship to occur, gender violence must be eradicated, as it is not an interpersonal problem, but an attack on the very concept of democracy. Despite increasing social awareness and legal measures taken to fight gender violence, it is still prevalent worldwide. Even in a country such as Spain, praised in the UN Handbook for Legislation on Violence Against Women (2010) for its advanced approach on gender violence, the legal framework has proved insufficient and deeper sociocultural changes are needed. This book presents, in this respect, groundbreaking investigations in the realm of politics, activism, and cultural production that offer both a complex picture of the agents involved in its transformation and a nuanced panorama of initiatives that subvert the normative framework of recognition of victims of gender violence. As a result, the book chapters articulate a construction of the victim as a subject that reflects and acts upon his/her experienc
Trade Review
“This collection builds an arresting account of the configuration of gender violence in modern Spanish contexts, but it also proposes a conceptual reconfiguration. Gender violence and reactions to it are opened up from a series of disciplinary perspectives, acutely drawn together by the editors in an exemplary introduction. Activism, creativity, genuinely critical theory, and a progressive, often queered feminist politics traverse the collection. With the majority of the research originally conducted through the medium of Spanish and focusing on crucial case studies and sites of resistance in Spain, the collection brings to the English-speaking scholarly world new and exceptionally significant material that would otherwise be less well known.”—Chris Perriam, Professor of Hispanic Studies, University of Manchester, United Kingdom; Member of the Editorial Collective of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies and of the Editorial Boards of the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas and Contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures
“This multivocal collection offers a nuanced account of the social rituals of normalization that set the conditions of gender violence and make it possible, ‘ordinary,’ and ultimately silenced. In delving into the intricacies of normative gender violence, the book interrogates the discursive matrices of gender and violence, as well as of the entrenched construction of gender-and-violence, including female victimhood and the paternalistic snares of recognition. Locally grounded and self-consciously situated, it powerfully reconsiders the current critical field of gender violence/power and its epistemological premises by suggesting new feminist conceptions (at once theoretical and political) of transformative critique and responsibility.”—Athena Athanasiou, Professor of Social Anthropology and Gender Studies, Panteion University, Greece; Co-author with Judith Butler of Dispossession: The Performative in the Political
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations – Acknowledgements – María José Gámez Fuentes/Rebeca Maseda García: The Configuration of Gender Violence: A Matrix to Be Reloaded – Ana de Miguel Álvarez: To Conceptualize Is to Politicize: Why Spain Has Acted as a Pioneer Regarding Gender Violence – Juana Gallego Ayala: In the Wake of Ana Orantes: For an Ethical Representation of Violence Against Women – Emma Gómez Nicolau: Silenced Voices: Prostitutes, Lesbians, and "Bad Women" in Spanish Public Policies on Gender Violence – Sonia Núñez Puente: Tactical Media and Activism Against Gender-Based Violence: Fetishization and Counterhegemonic Frameworks of Recognition – Laura Castillo Mateu: Feminist Activism and the Role of Memory in Revisiting the Discourse on Gender Violence in Spain – Lídia Puigvert/Cristina Pulido: Dialogues Among Diverse Women: Transforming Established Hegemonic Narratives in Associative Initiatives – Sarah Leggott: Narrative Representations of Gendered Violence and Women’s Resistance in Francoist Spain: Dulce Chacón’s La voz dormida (2002) and Almudena Grandes’s Inés y la alegría (2010) – Marián López Fernández Cao/Juan Carlos Gauli: From The Rape of Europa to Art Against Gender Violence in Spanish Culture – Alfredo Martínez-Expósito: Homophobia, Ethical Witnessing, and the Matrix of Gendered Violence: Issues of Intersectionality in Luppi/Hornos’s Pasos – Vera Burgos-Hernández: Ella(s): Resisting Victimhood, Unveiling Institutional Violence in Docufiction – María Castejón Leorza/Rebeca Maseda García: Carmina o revienta and Carmina y amén: Female Transgressions of Victimhood in Spanish Popular Cinema – Rebeca Maseda García/María José Gámez Fuentes: No More Victims: Changing the Script – Contributors – Index.
