In Legacies of War Kimberly Theidon examines the lives of children born of wartime rape and the experiences of their mothers and communities to offer a gendered theory of harm and repair. Drawing on ethnographic research in postconflict Peru and Colombia, Theidon considers the multiple environments in which conception, pregnancy, and childbirth unfold. She reimagines harm by taking into account the impact of violence on individual people as well as on more-than-human lives, bodies, and ecologies, showing how wartime violence reveals the interdependency of all life. She also critiques policy makers, governments, and humanitarian organizations for their efforts at postconflict justice, which frequently take an anthropocentric rights-based approach that is steeped in liberal legalism. Rethinking the intergenerational reach of war while questioning what counts as sexual and reproductive violence, Theidon calls for an explicitly feminist peace-building and postconflict agenda that includes a full range of sexual and reproductive rights, including access to safe and affordable abortions.
Kimberly Theidon is Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies at Tufts University and author of Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru.
Table of Contents
Gratitude vii Introduction 1 1. Beyond Stigma 9 2. Situated Biologies 37 3. Ecologies and Aftermaths 57 4. The Long Way Around 85 Final Reflections 93 Notes 97 Bibliography 107 Index 115
What People are Saying About This
Margaret Lock
“This stunning and timely book is rightly disturbing, with its focus on sexual violence and the harm inflicted on women and their offspring, directly and indirectly, in Peru and Colombia. Kimberly Theidon has pulled together threads of apparently disparate events over time to reveal how reproductive violence impacts multiple environments, moving far beyond a woman’s womb. She brings formidable insights to this highly perturbing subject.”
Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador - Elisabeth Jean Wood
“Combining sharp insight, cutting-edge theoretical work, and a profound assessment of the legacies of war and the possibilities of repair, Kimberly Theidon foregrounds the agency of women, insisting on a reproductive justice that includes women’s right to have or not have a child, and the means for choice to be available. Compelling and supremely well written, Legacies of War makes important interventions into studies of gender, war, violence, and human rights and will find an audience among scholars and policy makers working on transitional justice, peacekeeping, and peace building.”
