Disappearing Acts: On Gendered Violence, Pathological Cultures, and Civil Society

Abstract

“Human rights” is now a technique deployed to measure the progress of states. In the last two decades it has become both the normative language of how injustice is evaluated and a means through which powerful states discipline the new world order (Grewal 121). This disciplining often relies on a relation posed between gendered violence and human rights violations, whereby the denial of women's human rights represents the pathological cultures of repressive states. But this representation—commonly assumed by states, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the public—is founded on the ignoring or effacing of political violence. Discourses about human rights attribute responsibility for gendered violations to purportedly pathological cultures, rather than to political sources. This tendency becomes apparent in the narrative told of why violations occur, as well as in the solutions proposed to these violations. What lurks beneath this disappearing act is a presumption that the world is made up of two kinds of states. One kind, described as rogue states or failed states, has a pathological culture in the place of a civil society. The other kind of state enjoys both a civil society and a monopoly on legitimate violence.