Full Description
This book revisits the issue of Domestic Violence (DV) in Asia by exploring the question of family ambiguity, and interrogating DV's relationship between concept, law and strategy. Comparative experiences in the Asian context enable an examination of the effectiveness of family regulations and laws in diverse national, cultural and religious settings. Key questions relate to the limits and relevance of the human rights discourse in resolving family conflicts; the extent to which power and control in intimate relationships can actually be regulated by a set of inanimate, homogeneous and uniform policies and legislations; and how the state relates to the family as an "ambiguous" unit given state rules of governance that perpetuate unequal gender relations. Many of the difficulties in understanding DV have sprung from the fact that the family unit is ambiguous. When the state intervenes (e.g. reproductive health) the family is treated as a public concern; yet with respect to individual human/multicultural rights, the family is considered a private domain. Complications and contradictions arise with regard to different legislative/religious practices across Asia: for example, the enforcement of Sharia; technocratic imperatives with regard to demographic goals of marriage and reproduction; and state interference of gender imbalances and inequality. The politics and culture around DV is thus a mirror of modern-day Family-State collusion, which sustains rather than curtails discrimination based on sexuality and gender. This book views gender inequality for instance in relation to heteronormativity as the fundamental basis of intimate violence, rather than violence as a generic and neutral phenomenon, requiring generic solutions. It offers news theoretical insights to the conceptualisation of the family, culture and law with respect to DV. And it provides reasoned new perspectives on the effectiveness/inadequacy of present policies, laws and enforcement strategies against domestic violence in Asia.
Contents
The Essays; Apparatus; Translations into English; Style, notes, & chronology; Using the Works Cited; A Biography of Laura Esquivel; An Introduction to Esquivel Criticism; Like Water for Chocolate Like Water for Chocolate: The novels early critical reception; Like Water for Chocolate: The novel & the critics; Like Water for Chocolate: The film & the critics; The Law of Love; Swift as Desire; Malinche: A Novel; Future directions in Esquivel criticism; Laura Esquivels Mexican Chocolate; El chocolate mexicano de Laura Esquivel; Crossing Gender Borders: Subversion of Cinematic Melodrama in Like Water for Chocolate; Unmasked Men: Sex Roles in Like Water for Chocolate; The Absence of God & the Presence of Ancestors in Laura Esquivels Like Water for Chocolate; Gendered Spaces, Gendered Knowledge: A Cultural Geography of Kitchenspace in Central Mexico; Transformation, Code, & Mimesis: Healing the Family in Like Water for Chocolate; Cultural Identity & the Cosmos: Laura Esquivels Predictions for a New Millennium in The Law of Love; Laura Esquivels Quantum Leap in The Law of Love; The Two Mexicos of Swift as Desire; Malinche: Fleshing out the Foundational Fictions of the Conquest of Mexico; Esquivels Malinalli: Refusing the Last Word on La Malinche; Esquivels Fiction in the Context of Latin American Womens Writing; Glossary of Spanish & Nahuatl Words & Phrases; Index.
