'Verbal Violence Destroys the Soul': Survivors Challenge Dominant Conceptions of 'Domestic Violence' through the Clothesline Project

• In Event: Scholar to Scholar I

Abstract

While feminists recognize the multifaceted behaviors that constitute abuse, the public holds a narrow view of “domestic violence” due to patriarchal discourses that define abuse almost exclusively as physical violence. This qualitative content analysis of survivors’ Clothesline Project art illuminates survivors’ definitions of abuse. Through their art, the survivors craft an oppositional discourse that conceptualizes abuse as a range of behaviors that occur in many relationships but are not recognized as “violence” by dominant discourses.

Author

• Rachel Droogsma, Minnesota State University, Mankato