A Feminist Theory of Violence: A Decolonial Perspective by Françoise Vergès

A Feminist Theory of Violence: A Decolonial Perspective Reviews

• 
  Lady Clementina ffinch-ffarowmore

  My thanks to Pluto Press and Edelweiss for a review copy of this book.
  
  A Feminist Theory of Violence: A Decolonial Perspective is a short book by French political scientist and historian Françoise Vergès, and translated by Melissa Thackaway. The book views the current state of violence in society from a feminist perspective/lens, focusing on but at the same time not restricted to violence against women.
  
  Violence in the book is considered in a wider sense not only including physical violence as commonly understood (rape, massacres, genocide, and so on) and also perpetrated, for instance in wars, but also discrimination, hardship and vulnerabilities, the burden of which is borne (unfairly) by only certain segments (women, racialized people, those dubbed as ‘dangerous’ classes, etc.), degradation of our ecosystems, and relentless exploitation of resources.
  
  The book argues that we cannot respond to and address violence against women without considering violence as a whole—the global state of violence that persists today (as she writes a one point—a world where ‘war has been naturalized and peace reduced to an interlude between two violent moments…’). Violence, as she points out, including enslavement, exploitation, torture and censorship have always been the ‘tools of colonialism and capitalism disguised as civilizing missions and humanitarian missions’. The Western way of life, which elites all over the world have adopted, in fact rests on the normalization of violence. In such a scenario, how can one address violence which becomes both ‘inevitable’ and ‘necessary’?
  
  Not only that, the entity/authority that is charged with ‘protecting’ people from violence—the state—itself perpetrates violence—militarizing protection, enhancing surveillance, creating enclaves (‘safe’ spaces vis-à-vis others), ‘constructing’ people into ‘dangerous’ classes and races. In practice, peoples are divided into those seen ‘worthy’ of protection and those excluded from it, which Vergès describes as ‘a tangible division that describes the social world’. As she writes, ‘When protection is subjected to racial, class, gender and sexual criteria, it contributes in its logic and its application to domination’.
  
  Feminism too, is divided today into ‘appropriate’ (which doesn’t attack capitalism), and that which is anti-fascist and anti-capitalist. A decolonial feminism according to her is aware of the violence of the state and the impacts of racism and colonialism and the relevance of all forms of struggle. It is also about evoking the right to a peaceful life in a violent world—developing a ‘right to rest, to a peaceful life’. She also stresses the need to protect human beings ‘without turning them into victims and without considering weakness as a failing’.
  
  This is a powerful and thought-provoking book which peels away the facades that society currently lives behind—of peace, justice, equality, and rights. It highlights a number of relevant issues, among them the need to address violence as a whole and in all its forms that pervade our society today, rather than singling out different forms for that can clearly never be effective since as she notes violence today is normalised. In that regard, it is as important to address the differentiation of people—their classification on the basis of race, gender, class, sexual orientation—as those seen as worthy of being protected and those not. As is clear from the examples she cites, such distinctions are traceable to and continue on from colonialism at which time existing ‘human rights’ protections like prohibitions on slavery were manipulated so as to allow the practice to flourish. Today, these are reflected in the denial of roles of peoples (often from the Global South) in the every day fulfilment of the ‘ideal’ lives in the Global North, for not only do they face discrimination, exploitation and vulnerability in the everyday—but when they might be victims/accused in ‘crimes’, they receive differential treatment from a machinery supposedly created to protect all.
  
  The book illustrates its points with examples and instances from different parts of the world including the United States and India, but I particularly found interesting instances from French colonial history and contemporary French politics, as well as from French overseas territories like Guadeloupe, of which my knowledge is limited.
  
  We seem still left with many questions—will the world ever see sense, see what they are doing (after all, for instance, after the pandemic and the positive impacts on nature during the lockdown, we seem to have learnt little); if the state itself is complicit in violence, what/who are we to turn to; if discrimination and attitudes towards certain sections of society persist in practice despite all of the instruments we supposedly have in place, what is their value?
  
  While I thought the book makes a number of relevant points, I felt at the end one is left with rather a sense of despair for as the author concludes—'we are living in an era in which it is impossible to escape the unleashing of uncontrollable violence produced by greed, cupidity, and power unless we organize alongside those who have nothing to lose’.
• 
  Sarah Schulman

  Francoise Verges's new book 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.
• 
  Maja Solar

  u zaglušujućoj buci inih vrsta karceralnih feminizama – onih koji se zalažu ili na bilo koji način podupiru postojeće sisteme kažnjavanja, zatvaranja i policiju, te koji hoće strožije kazne za prestupnike, više kazni, više zatvora, više policije, jače sudstvo, odnosno sve oblike državne „zaštite‟ ‒ postoje i knjige poput ove, koje odlično p(r)okazuju probleme s takvim simplificiranim pristupima nasilju, te koje uopšte ne ‘angeliziraju’ koncept feminizma, nego jasno naznačuju linije razdvajanja između vrlo različitih feminizama : pa je, prema Fransoaz Veržes, pozicija dekolonijalnog feminizma (un féminisme décolonial) sasvim suprotna od svih onih struja feminizama koje potpadaju pod ono što ona imenuje civilizatorskim feminizom (un féminisme civilisationnel), čija je suštinska misija civiliziranje (pretpostavka je: ne-civiliziranih) : civilizatorskim feminizmom autorka naziva sve one vrste feminizama koji su misionarski, koji imaju civilizatorsku misiju (mission civilisatrice) ‘spašavanja žena’, uglavnom siromašnih i ne-bijelih žena od (nasilnih) muškaraca iz njihovih patrijarhalnih zajednica i od ‘primitivnih, ‘nazadnjačkih’ kultura (koje treba ukrcati u voz kapitalizma, pa ne samo nadzirati i kazniti, nego i zadužiti i upregnuti njihova radna tijela u stvaranje dobiti za bogate) : civilizatorski feminizam je, dakle, blizak državi i učvršćuje državu, te u ime ‘ženskih prava’ podupire imperijalne, islamofobne, kolonizatorske, rasističke, sekuritarne itsl. projekte („.. državni i prividno univerzalistički feminizam kojem sekuritarne i i imperijalističke politike ne smetaju‟) : kada se govori o rodno temeljenom nasilju, civilizatorski feminizam prevashodno ističe nasilje nad ženama, a nad kojim ženama, iz kojih klasa, kakvih rasijaliziranih, etniziranih i drugih iskustava, te šta uopšte znači iskustvo bivanja „ženom‟ i ko se računa kao „žena‟ to civilizatorski feminizmi ne propituju, oni pretpostavljaju : ne daju uzročna objašnjenja već uzročna svođenja, zapravo ne objašnjavaju, nego opisuju i pretpostavljaju : jer počivaju na ideji podrazumijevajuće i tobože univerzalne kategorije Žene, pa ta esencijalizirajuća kategorija dobro dođe kao paravan za prikrivanje svih drugih opresija, potčinjavanja i eksploatacije „Pojam ‘žene’, skovan da se opiše realnost koja pretenduje na homogenost, osvetljava opšti karakter potlačenosti, prikrivajući različitost njenih formi‟ : dekolonijalni feminizam, pak, polazi od toga da valja preispitati „zapadnu feminističku ideologiju koja bi htela sebe da vidi kao univerzalnu, koja bi volela da govori u ime svih žena’’ : dekolonijalni feminizam govori o orodnjenim oblicima nasilja, te kako su oni sistemski uvezani s drugim formama nasilja koje kapitalizam proizvodi i reprodukuje : nasilje se dakle misli kao strukturno, stoga je i orodnjeno nasilje (la violence genrée) ili nasilje temeljeno na rodu (la violence fondée sur le genre) nemoguće misliti bez promišljanja celovite strukture nasilja, a onda nije nevažno o kojim ženama i drugim društveno-ranjivima govorimo kada govorimo o nasilju, također moramo govoriti i o nasilju nad muškarcima, te nasilju nad brojnim marginaliziranim grupama : „Odvajanje situacije žena od konteksta globalne naturalizacije nasilja održava podvojenost koja ide u korist patrijarhata i kapitalizma, pošto se tako identifikuju i kažnjavaju ‘nasilni muškarci’, naturalizuje se nasilje pojedinaca, a strukture koje proizvode to jezivo nasilje ostaju netaknute‟ : Veržes, naravno, govori i o ozbiljnom problemu silovanja muškaraca (posebice muškaraca iz nižih klasa, lgbtiq+ muškaraca, rasijaliziranih muškaraca itd.) ne umanjujući težinu fenomena silovanja žena : iz ovakve perspektive, policija, sudstvo, pravo i zakon nisu ništa neutralno, jer nam je istorija državnih politika zaštite pokazala da je rasistička, kolonijalna, seksistička, da štiti određena tijela isključujući i tlačeći ona tijela za koja se smatra da ne zaslužuju zaštitu, a ne zaboravimo i to da su policija i vojska jedne od ključnih instanci silovanja… : stoga se iz ove feminističke vizure ne pristaje na zadate okvire, na kazne, na policijsko i sudsko nasilje – čija je glavna svrha da kriminalizira siromašne, rasijalizirane, ejblizirane i druge marginalizovane : policija je kapitalistička tvorevima par excellence, te se dekolonijalni feminizam ne zalaže za strožije kazne i više policije, niti za reformu policije, nego za aboliciju policije! zaštitu ne možemo prepustiti onim strukturama koje i postoje u svrhe održavanja i produbljivanja podele na one živote koji zaslužuju protekciju i na one koji to ne zaslužuju, na življive i neživljive živote…
  čini mi se da s ovim prevodom na srpski ima ne-malih problema : ovde ću samo istaći da je već prevod ‘civilizatorskog feminizma’ kao ‘prosvetiteljskog’ nedostatan, jer nisu sasvim preklapajući pojmovi i nije baš najbolje rešenje ono kojim se briše specifična povijesno-konceptualna uloga prosvetiteljstva u istoriji ideja, ali ima i ozbiljnijih grešaka (nadam se re-izdanju i ako ikako mogu pomoću u poboljšanju prevoda, tu sam)
  
• 
  Aaron Akbar

  A nuanced and well researched intersectional view of feminist thought and it's shortcomings. Dealing deftly with race, incarceration, capitalism, and modernity all at the same time, Verges still manages to be concise and direct in her message.
  
  We cannot be effective feminists until we seek to end violence toward women (and men!) through a systemic and restorative approach rather than our tried and true penal system. This book outlines well exactly why that is.
• 
  Raïssa

  une écriture moins fluide que féminisme decoloniale et des citations à chaque ligne. le découpage est confus mais le fond est important. je recommanderai plutôt de lire se défendre d’elsa dolrin, à la place.
• 
  JC

  4.5 stars.
  
  I first encountered Vergès when reading about Réunion — an island east of Madagascar, near Mauritius. There were a few months of my life during which I was very preoccupied with learning about coffee. There's a variety/cultivar of coffee, bourbon, that commands a somewhat elevated reputation among some cohorts of coffee roasters. It's named after Réunion island, which was formerly known to French colonizers as Bourbon island, named after the royal House of Bourbon. The name was later changed during the French Revolution, which occurred in the same moment as the abolition of slavery in that French colony. Vergès’ doctoral dissertation at Berkeley was entitled, “Monsters and revolutionaries: Colonial family romance and grooming.” It was a political history of Réunion and her own family’s engagement with its politics. Her father Paul Vergès was the founder of the Communist Party of Réunion, and later ran as a candidate for the French Communist Party. Paul’s mother (Francoise’s grandmother) is of Vietnamese ancestry.
  
  This book was a very readable critique of carceral feminism, and a very helpful theorization of violence for me. There are some forays into current feminist debates that I feel fairly undecided upon at the moment, but overall I enjoyed reading this book (to the extent one can enjoy a book about violence). I think this excerpt from the preface sums up well what this book is about:
  
  “The Western way of life, adopted now also by elites in the Global South, rests on the normalization of violence, on making violence not only inevitable but also necessary. Images of what is shown as the good life abound in glossy magazines, in films, or in TV series—clean neighborhoods, houses with luxurious gardens, healthy children laughing while playing on clean beaches, women doing yoga in serene landscapes, hipsters with trimmed beards that do not get them racially profiled, vacations in beautiful places from which the poor are evicted, white saviors doing good deeds, electric cars to save the planet, leisure that cultivates one’s mind, food that is grown with respect to the planet… They construct a visual world that adheres to a beauty and harmony which masks its attending violence. Its protection is then presented as the fight of civilization against barbarism, plagues, violence, gangs, violence against women and girls. Protection is understood in the colonial tradition: keep the barbarians at the gates; militarize the public space; create social, environmental, and cultural segregation; use artwashing, politics of bourgeois respectability and white feminism to justify this segregation. The wealth that has allowed this good life was accumulated thanks to the extraction of cheap energy (coal and hydrocarbons), the looting and plundering of natural resources by colonial powers. The well-being of European and North American populations was built at the expense of the colonized world. This good life, that reveals a constant stark inequality between North and South, rests on the super-exploitation of the Global South’s resources, on the exhaustion, until premature death, of the life force and energy of Black and brown peoples. That it must be protected by all means is taken for granted, for is it not the sign of progress and civilization, and the object of envy and desire by “the rest”?
  
  Violence is consubstantial to racial capitalism; it is not something that comes afterwards, the act of some extreme groups. Ecosystem degradation is accelerated by capitalism, which intensifies pollution and waste, deforestation, land-use change and exploitation, and carbon-driven energy systems. Rape, land theft, genocide, massacres, assassinations, destruction of public services, processes of enslavement, creation of private militias, torture, censorship, have always been the tools of colonialism and capitalism disguised as civilizing missions or humanitarian interventions. Imperialist wars leave behind ruins, pollution, devastation and misery and their “end” means that war is pursued through other means. Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, are the current names of this kind of war.”
• 
  Martha CO

  RE.BUILD.THE.SYSTEM.
  
  If you consider yourself a ‘feminist’, you must read this.
  
  Vergés’ ‘radical’ feminist theory convincingly illustrates the violence of the systems of the world. I loved her notion of feminism concerning not just ‘females’ but ‘feminised’ people in society- those being people who are dominated. This then leads to the fight of racialised, poor, disabled, trans and non-binary people being married to the fight of women and highlights the crux of the feminist issue- domination. This idea of domination then of course portrays the systems which perpetuate domination of one group over another: capitalism, the prison system, militarisation to name a few, set to the backdrop of the colonial legacies which perpetuate violence against and between dominated groups.
  
  Vergés exposes the hypocrisy of a feminism exclusive of racialised people, showing the inhumanity of lives we see as worthy of protection and lives we see as disposable or menacing.
  
  Her frank discussion of neoliberalism and capitalism being tools which perpetuate violence and control
  over the global south and thus intensify gender, racial and class based violence, exploitation and impoverishment was jolting and eye opening.
  
  This was a book full of hard to swallow truths and a transformative work to anyone’s interest in feminist theory in international relations and politics.
  
  Absolutely fantastic book.
• 
  Greg Florez

  A building in and repetition of many ideas brought up in A Decolonial Feminism. These English translations are helping to build the reputation of Vergès as working within an ever more powerful school of feminist thought and practice.
  Some of the translation was questionable at times, but still provides for a clear and concise argument for a decolonial feminist approach to Violence.
  
• 
  Guillaume

  Première introduction à Françoise Vergès (
  Un féminisme décolonial va suivre), j'avoue ressortir un peu déçu de ma lecture que je résumerais comme un bon condensé de pensées et un petit rappel historique des violences (racistes, féminicides) et des actions menées par les opprimé·e·s. Prenant appui sur les pensées de nombreuses autres femmes autrices défendant des idées similaires, Vergès construit le récit de la répression raciale et genrée perpétrée par l'homme occidentale, tout en révélant les limites et les stratagèmes du féminisme étatique. Vergès nous parle de colonisation, prison, travail du sexe, genre, viol, urbanisme... Chouette livre qui donne simplement l'impression d'être une compilation succincte de quelques pensées publiées dans les dernières années et vues par le prisme de l'actualité récentes (mouvements sociaux de 2019-2020, Covid-19).
  
  Livres cités dans l'ouvrage qui ont déjà faits leurs preuves :
  Se défendre, une philosophie de la violence,
  Pour elles toutes : femmes contre la prison,
  Une culture du viol à la française &
  Ne crois pas avoir de droits.
• 
  Catie Parker

  I learned so much from this book about carceral feminism, and its caused me to deeply reflect on many of the views I’ve previously held. My biggest complaint is that it doesn’t pose any solutions to the problems it addresses, but it does provide an important framework for understanding the future of feminism in a post-COVID 19 society.
  
• 
  Sandra

  Is the synopsis for this book telling me there is no sex-based violence against women in non-capitalist, non-formerly-imperialist, state-based countries?
  
  This kind of Lalaland myopia is as exhausting as it is boneheaded. Hard pass.
  
  
  
  
• 
  Shukri

  2.5 stars really and truly - I think it is a good introductory text to those who don’t know anything about the problems of carceral feminism, racial nature of policing, or prison abolition. For those of you who do, I would suggest skipping this; the analysis felt like nothing new and echoing previous arguments made by abolitionist feminists and black feminists without Verges herself adding anything new besides contemporary examples to illustrate these points.
  
  Each chapter was approx 20 pages and brought up so many points but due to its short and compact nature, Verges could not thoroughly engage with the ideas she brought up and ultimately stifled the potentially radical and critical nature of her text.
  
  What I would recommend instead (texts that addressed the points Verges made/brought up in brilliant and incisive ways - although they are more difficult, which is why I think Feminist Theory of Violence is a good introductory text):
  - Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers Rights by Molly Smith and Juno Mac
  - The Right to Maim by Jasbir Puar
  - No Mercy Here by Sarah Haley
  - Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe by Hortense Spillers
  - Captive Genders by E A Stanley and N Smith
  - Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Control by Bridget Anderson
  - Race, Gender, and the Body in British Immigration Control by E Smith and M Marmo
  
  Also, the lack of engagement here with Puar’s work, Haley’s work, and masculinities studies really disappointed me.
• 
  Amanda Rosso

  Importante, decisiva, sintetica ma esaustiva, Francoise Vergès non risparmia nessun*: non le femministe bianche borghesi che fanno del securitarismo razziale la loro bandiera rosa, non le liberal che chiedono pene più dure per chi commette reati contro le donne, ma poi sfrutta le donne marginalizzate e razzializzate per "have it all", non risparmia gli uomini che, assurgendo a paladini delle donne operano all'interno di istanze neoliberiste e coloniali, e non risparmia la responsabilità collettiva di smantellare il patriarcato capitalista, razzista, abilista ed eteronormato, non fermarsi alla performatività dell'intersezionalità ma davvero ricomporre le nostre istanze in un amore rivoluzionario e collettivo, che includa la rabbia e faccia dell'amore rivoluzionario il suo nucleo portante.
• 
  Julie Vautour

  This book made me want to smash capitalism and patriarchy even more!
• 
  xza.rain

  « plus que le refuge, c’est ce droit au repos, à
  une vie paisible qu’il faut développer contre la violence. »
• 
  Augenstein

  An introduction to intersectional, anti-carceral feminism that explores the subtle ways in which racism and misogyny have been historically interwoven, and how capitalism works to enforce a status quo in which both are systemic and the only acceptable pushback to patriarchy and brutality is liberal white feminism.
  Most examples used within this text are of French law and government, with notable reference to American and British imperialism also incorporated.
• 
  Simon

  Looks at the co-option pf feminism by neoliberalism and neofascism, the problematics of women's "protection" in a capitalist state, looks at all the tendrils of violence and control. A decolonial feminist call for an end to a carceral state.
• 
  Samantha Parzuchowski

  Learned many new words & concepts. Appreciate the radical message of resistance & camaraderie. ✊Quite dense. I enjoyed reading it aloud to my dog as I paced about. Her and I slowly dissected each sentence.
• 
  Michiel Mennen

  Makes a compelling point. With a sledgehammer (or a less violent metaphorical object). Beware the amount of jargon, repitition and summations; it makes it challenging to read and comprehend and feels tedious at times, but the gems of truth and insight do lie hidden beneath.
• 
  Larakaa

  On point. Great analysis without drifting into theoratical spheres but rather working with a lot of examples.
• 
  Grace La Vone

  this book was just super difficult to read because of the writing style
• 
  tblr

  I gave this book 3 stars for the wealth of history and information. But this book came across as a humanist theory of violence rather than feminist.
• 
  Nina

  i thought vergés’ feminist perspective on violence against women was very interesting. i agree with her argument that we cannot address violence against women without considering violence as a whole. i was also very interested in her anti-colonial perspective on the normalization of violence and the perpetration of violence by the state. i also liked her deliberations on why incarceration is not the solution.
  in the end, however, i was left with more questions than i started with. also, i felt like the book could have used some more editing so that it is a little easier to understand the red line in the story
• 
  Sophie

  Françoise Vergès a de grosses lacunes dans le domaine LGBTI+ et cela se ressent malheureusement à la lecture.
  Un travail plus poussé et solide qu'Un féminisme décolonial qui était vraiment bâclé mais toujours le ressenti d'une synthèse très rapide de nombreuses autrices féministes et décoloniales.
  Il reste un livre intéressant dans les mains de novices sur le sujet, en guise d'introduction et de vulgarisation.
• 
  Anaïs

  Un essai critique du féminisme carcéral et punitif grandissant dans la lutte contre les violences sexistes et sexuelles, ainsi que des politiques de protection, qui interroge sur les racines de la violence et comment mener une lutte féministe intersectionnelle et antiraciste. Quel plaisir de lire un essai à contre-courant des analyses actuelles suite au movement#MeToo qui promeuvent le recours à une justice patriarcale et au système carcéral étatique!
• 
  Elodie Drt

  J'ai apprécié cette lecture dans la lignée de " Un féminisme décolonial". Il est évident que le rapport à la protection et la manière dont les mesures sont appliquées dans la société française ne sont pas les mêmes si vous êtes une personne racisé/étrangère ou blanche. En finissant ce livre une seule solution m'apparait : en finir avec le capitalisme pour un monde plus égalitaire et juste !