A Feminist Theory of Violence: A Decolonial Perspective

by Françoise Vergès, Melissa Thackway (Translator)

Overview

'A robust, decolonial challenge to carceral feminism' - Angela Y. Davis

***Winner of an English PEN Award 2022***

The mainstream conversation surrounding gender equality is a repertoire of violence: harassment, rape, abuse, femicide. These words suggest a cruel reality. But they also hide another reality: that of gendered violence committed with the complicity of the State.

In this book, Françoise Vergès denounces the carceral turn in the fight against sexism. By focusing on 'violent men', we fail to question the sources of their violence. There is no doubt as to the underlying causes: racial capitalism, ultra-conservative populism, the crushing of the Global South by wars and imperialist looting, the exile of millions and the proliferation of prisons - these all put masculinity in the service of a policy of death.

Against the spirit of the times, Françoise Vergès refuses the punitive obsession of the State in favour of restorative justice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745345673
Publisher:	Pluto Press
Publication date:	04/20/2022
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Françoise Vergès is an activist and public educator. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of many books including A Decolonial Feminism and Wombs of Women.

Melissa Thackway is an independent researcher and translator. She lectures in African Cinema at Sciences-Po and INALCO in Paris. Her recent translations include Contemporary African Cinema by Olivier Barlet, Tropical Dream Palaces: Cinema-Going in Colonial West Africa by Odile Goerg and African Diasporic Cinema: Aesthetics of Reconstruction by Daniela Ricci.

Table of Contents

Preface to the English Edition 
Introduction 
1. Neoliberal Violence
2. Race, Patriarchy, and the Politics of Women’s Protection 
3. The Impasse of Punitive Feminism 
Conclusion: For a Decolonial Feminist Politics 
Notes 
Index 

Editorial Reviews

‘Vergès’ book avoids both the trap of disavowing the feminist project entirely while refusing to ally herself with the destructive, ongoing elite capture of feminist politics ... the book performs a necessary cataloging function and offers an international perspective for English-language readers tempted toward American chauvinism in the fight against global racial capitalism’

The New Inquiry

'In this robust, decolonial challenge to carceral feminism, Francoise Vergès elucidates why a structural approach to violence is needed. If we wish to understand how racial capitalism is linked to the proliferation of intimate and state violence directed at women and gender-nonconforming people, we need to look no further than Vergès' timely analysis'
Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of California, Santa Cru


'A powerful and uncompromising text … A stunning reflection on the recurrence of assault - gender-based, sexual, racial violence'
'Terrafemina'

'An important and courageous book, which raises difficult questions and uncovers invisible structures of domination'
'Trou Noir'

'Vergès's incandescent writing casts a light on the global inequalities, brutal carceral systems, unfettered militarisation and punitive ideologies that shape violent intimacies'
Laleh Khalili, Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary University of London

'A call to join in the urgent decolonial feminist work of rethinking the practices of (so-called) protection outside of the logics of violence. We have the ability, Vergès insists, to enact a post violent society, to bring another world into being'
Christina Sharpe, Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York University, Toronto and author of 'In the Wake: On Blackness and Being'

'A road map of radical emancipatory imaginaries for shaping urgent social and political change. Vergès' arguments rise from the ground up, from the lived experience of grassroots dissent, action and mobilisation against the wounds and damages inflicted by extractive capitalism across the world'
Rasha Salti, curator of art and film

'Françoise Vergès asks a simple question: what actually is the politics of protection? What she reveals is a paradigm spinning analysis. Once she establishes the perspective of people without power, the 'protection' offered by the state and the meta-state of global capital, is exposed as a killing machine of enforcement and endless punishment. A door opening work'
Sarah Schulman, author of 'The Gentrification of the Mind' and 'Let the Records Show: A Political History of ACT UP'

From the Publisher