Legibility and Violence in Feminist Political Theory

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

In the face of rising authoritarianism, movements against feminicide have gained momentum in the past year, from Mexico to Turkey to France. These democratic protests point to the role of gender-based violence in the destabilization of democracy, and indicate the need to make such violence legible. To that end, this panel interrogates the relationship between legibility and violence in feminist political theory. How can women, as well as trans and gender-nonconforming people, who suffer violence make their experiences legible? What tropes—such as the witch—and genres—including dramatic performance—do feminists appropriate to make their claims heard? Can violence itself, and the emotions that accompany it, serve as a tool for women to speak as a unified political group? Or is violence inevitably destructive of political life? Together, these papers highlight fundamental tensions in political theory that surround the conditions for legible speech and the role of violence in democratic politics.
These papers approach problems of legibility and violence through engagement with political theoretical texts and contemporary activism. Reading Simone de Beauvoir’s literary writing, Ani Chen considers how theater allows women to speak about the concrete conditions of their lives, even as the men of the play attempt to murder women through exile. Kimberly Killen explores how women in contemporary feminist movements leverage the trope of the witch to make themselves heard, drawing on the history of deadly witch-burnings in early modernity. Danielle Hanley looks at the language of incarcerated women who participate in The Medea Project, alongside Euripides’ Medea, to query the role of rage and violence in fostering community. Finally, turning to Hannah Arendt’s work, Rose Owen argues that the description of gender-based violence as “intimate,” “private,” and “domestic” perpetrates another form of violence by removing women from the shared political world.

Sub Unit

• Division 3: Normative Theory

Individual Presentations

• The Politics of Legibility in Simone de Beauvoir’s Les Bouches Inutiles - Ani Chen, Cornell University

• Being a Witch: Feminist Reception and Retributive Speech Acts - Kimberly Killen, University of Colorado, Boulder

• Foundational Rage: The Medea Project and Rage as Community-Building Praxis - Danielle Hanley, Clark University

• Intimate Violence and Political Death in Hannah Arendt’s "On Violence" - Rose Owen

Chair

• Shatema Threadcraft Dartmouth College

Discussant

• Robyn Marasco CUNY, Hunter College