Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley.
Zeynep Gambetti is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Bogaziçi University.
Leticia Sabsay is Assistant Professor in the Gender Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley.
Zeynep Gambetti is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Bogaziçi University.
Leticia Sabsay is Assistant Professor in the Gender Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley.
Zeynep Gambetti is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Bogaziçi University.
Leticia Sabsay is Assistant Professor in the Gender Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Violence against Women in Turkey: Vulnerability, Sexuality, and Eros
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Published:October 2016
The high rate of violence against women in Turkey has become a central component of governmental, legal, and media initiatives as well as feminist politics, yet women’s vulnerability seems to be growing. This violence is represented in ways that foreclose memory and mourning by depicting women mainly as “victims.” These representations play two female “selves” off against each other: the sublimated figure of the woman who should be protected; and the specter of the vulnerable woman subjected to a fixed account of sexual difference. The threat of vulnerability works to instrumentalize and subordinate sexuality to its “natural” reproductive purposes within heterosexual marriage, which actually breeds more violence by effacing violence within the family. To avoid this discursive trap, the chapter offers Herbert Marcuse's concept of Eros to claim that violence against women can be rethought in relation to an infinity of women's desire that cannot be perfectly captured and submitted to a “natural” subordination.
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