Fragmented victims: Women victims of gender-based violence in the face of expert discourses and practices in Spain

Abstract

This article seeks to provide insight into the situation of women victims of gender-based violence in the face of the expert discourses and practices developed in contemporary Spain. The number and diversity of expert apparatuses and agents, each with their own genealogy, respond to different—and even conflicting—discursive frameworks and modes of practice. The analysis of empirical material—in-depth interviews with both experts and abused women, as well as a specific ethnographic assessment of the judicial space that deals with such cases—reveals how women who are victims of gender-based violence have to deal with the contradictions between structural/judicial and therapeutic discourses and practices, and how that leads to victim fragmentation.