Abstract
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.
Highlights
humanitarian campaigns in the mass media have become the source of accounts on the systematic violence perpetrated against women
exploit the specific facts regarding these attacks on women's bodies
This article analyses the different narratives circulating on sexual violence from the perspective
Summary
Los documentales y las campañas mediáticas de la industria humanitaria se han convertido en los principales relatos sobre la violencia sexual sistemática que se ha perpetrado contra las mujeres en la República Democrática del Congo desde el año 1996 hasta el día de hoy. Ya sean políticas o mediáticas, explotan los hechos concretos que tienen que ver con los ataques contra los cuerpos y rara vez dan cuenta del auténtico impacto que tiene la violencia sexual en las vidas de las mujeres, más allá de las lesiones y la enfermedad. Este artículo analiza las diferentes narrativas que se han puesto a circular sobre la violencia sexual desde la perspectiva de los «cuerpos sociales» con el fin de visibilizar los problemas que surgen del abuso de este tipo de prácticas narrativas.
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