Bringing Together Feminist and Visual Criminology to (Re)Imagine Invisible Injuries

• In Event: Understanding Women's Offending and Victimization: Feminist Criminology and Advocacy

Abstract

This paper builds upon earlier work that brings together approaches from feminist and visual studies to interrogate forms of evidence related to crime. Specifically, we incorporate methods from each to examine an ongoing case study of “invisible injuries” sustained by survivors of family violence. In this case, the most prominent invisible injury that advocates, legal representatives, medical experts, and survivors attempt to see is brain trauma. The case demonstrates how interpretations of visualizations serve as evidence of the injury, victimization, and longstanding effects on survivors’ health and well-being. Such efforts to pursue justice, we argue, illustrate challenges of doing a feminist visual criminology—namely, the tensions of expertise, context, agency, and voice in relation to representation. We conclude with a preliminary discussion of how this case study highlights challenges of pursuing a feminist visual criminology.

Authors

• Kathryn Henne, University of Waterloo/Australian National University

• Rita Shah, Eastern Michigan University