Introduction

This Introduction lays out the dominant theoretical approaches to naming and theorizing GBV and its representation. It also highlights some of the volume’s unique features, namely, its global perspective and its contemporary focus. Finally, the Introduction sets out the overall structure of the volume, which includes three broad sections: one on Representation as Violence, which considers essays that investigate representations that re-affirm the patriarchal symbolic order; a second part on Revealing Representations, which includes essays that analyze the use of representations that uncover otherwise silent forms of gender abuse; and a third section on Representative Re-Imaginings with contributions on portrayals that contest given or assumed meanings, terms, categories regarding sexist abuse, thus subverting the patriarchal symbolic order. As its overall structure suggests, Representing Gender-Based Violence: Global Perspectives engages with the analysis of GBV representations from a militant, yet scholarly, perspective. The category of militant criticism adequately reflects the general approach that editors and authors have unanimously adopted. The aim is to offer rigorous inquiries that, however, do not disguise their feminist ethos as well as their objective of providing the reader with a set of interpretative tools to be used whenever a critique of the ethical positioning of a text or discourse concerning GBV is needed.