Full Description
Unexpected Subjects is an ethnography of the encounter between women's words and the demands of the law in the context of adjudications on intimate partner violence. A study of institutional devices, it focuses on women's practices of resistance and the elicitation of intelligible subjectivities. Using Italy as an illustrative case, Alessandra Gribaldo explores the problematic encounter between the need to speak, the entanglement of violence and intimacy, and the way the law approaches domestic violence. On this basis she advances theoretical reflections on questions of evidence, persuasion, and testimony, and their implications for ethnographic theory. Gribaldo analyzes dynamics that create the victim-subject, shedding light on how the Italian legal system reproduces broader conditions of violence against women. This book will be of great interest to all social scientists concerned with gender and the law.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1. (Un)familiar violence
Violence degree zero
Mistreated subjects and intractable violence
Chapter 2. Wavering intentions
Recognize and speak the violence!
Maltrattamenti in famiglia and the abused subject
The experience of intimate partner violence: A crime with a story
Chapter 3. Confessing victimhood
Evidence and testimonial proof
The burden of evidence: experience
When evidence lies in the victim subject
Chapter 4. The gender of true-lying
The burden of persuasion: intention and biased evidence
Agency vs credibility
Oblique narratives: the imperfect victim
Conclusions
