When Bodies Talk. Embodiment in Narratives on Sexual Violence in the Wars of the Democratic Republic of Congo
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/rdtp.2015.01.008Keywords:
Embodiment, Narratives, Sexual Violence, DRCongo, Advocacy, WitnessingAbstract
News, documentaries and humanitarian campaigns in the mass media have become the source of accounts on the systematic violence perpetrated against women in the DRC since 1996. These accounts, whether political or media, exploit the specific facts regarding these attacks on women’s bodies, rarely visibilizing the true impact of sexual violence on women’s lives. This has helped shape a standpoint —already to some extent historically consolidated and ensconced in international forums— that identifies Congolese women as passive victims, as mere raped bodies. It is a standpoint that mobilises pity and compassion in the public and generates an immobilist approach to humanitarian intervention and international aid, rather than promoting frameworks in which Congolese women are relevant players in peacebuilding. This article analyses the different narratives circulating on sexual violence from the perspective of the «social body,» rendering visible problems that arise from the abuse of this type of narrative practice.
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