violence against women

[FriggaHaug@xxxxxxx]

dear friends and possible participants in the discussion on violence against
women.
Since the discussion on my question about violenbce against women is going on
rather reluctantly though I got several individual offers to help for which I
am very grateful, I will try to repeat my question and expand it a little.
First the reason why I ask.
We (a group of marxists all over the world - with 800 cooperating scientists
from all countries - or almost all - directed from a small group (15 people)
in Berlin, Germany) are writing, editing, putting together a huge historical
critical dictionary of marxism. The aim is to retrieve the heritage of
liberatory thinking and to collect the wealth of critical thinking. The work
will have 15 volumes, 4 of them are already published and on the market. No
library in the world can avoid subscribing to this international work - so
you might find it in your home-university as well.
Within the editorial group I am responsible for feminism, women, gender etc.
This has special difficulties as you might imagine, since the complete works
of marx and engels and the history of marxism is not just full of terrific
insights into these questions. On the other hand feminisms have not yet
achieved enough to just collect results.
This means that lots of problematics are formulated in concepts which just
hinder their understanding - this is eg the case with the term >women's case<
and to some extent for >double burden<, which focuses our thoughts to the
idea that women have too much work instead of investigating the contradictory
articulation of womens work as waged labour in contrast to domestic labour
etc.
Now The problem of >violence against women<.  The term speaks on the level of
a phenomenon which is there to an extent that we should deal with it in a
liberatory perspective. But at the same time it is posed in a phrasing that
it leads us to thinking of women as victims, men as actors - and we will have
difficulties to understand it - except in psychological terms - and with this
to think of resistance and change. Maybe >violence against women< is not a
concept worth working with and thereby gaining more agency, but just a
description as is accident in traffic etc. On the other hand there will be an
entry on >violence <. It will be written by Etienne Balibar and he will
probably forget women altogether and with this that there is something more
to understand. So my question is, how can we research >violence against
women< without just presenting a list of all these different violations all
over the world but understanding the structures, the shifting of problems,
the language of sexual violence? The most convincing piece I have read is the
small essay by the Canadian sociologist Dorothy Smith , where she tries to
connect the fact of domestic violence with the male breadwinner and his
>right< to expect a good cared for house for his effort etc. But still also
this approach seems to lack a lot since it does not include sexual violence,
which might be a better term to begin with? It also lacks the fact that male
violence is not reduced to husbands batting wives. Somehow we need an
approach which ties the special violence against women to both capitalist as
well as pre-capitalist modes of production, and then it should also allow to
understand womens activities within this field.
One of my problems is, that I feel uneasy with the concept and at the same
time not competent enough to write on it myself. This is why I hope to learn
by a discussion and to find wonderful authors at the same time.

And as a short answer to the first two answers not understanding and
rejecting the term >victim-discourse< . I thought that every marxist would
know, that this discourse of describung others as victims which have to be
liberated by sombedoy else - poor people by noble acts of richer ones, third
world countries by >help< of developed countries, women by men etc - was a
way of liberal pity and thinking and not at all part of our winning agency.
This is specially the case in all questions concerning women, whose fate it
was at best (in the worker's movement and even in the Communist Manifest) to
be liberated by men but not to liberate themselves.

I hope this clarifies the area and we can really discuss
yours Frigga Haug