Louise Lund Liebmann

ABSTRACT

Applied to institute a distinct category of violence, the testimonial format of battered migrant women who escape their families is a recurrent narrative pattern in public discourses on honor-based violence. Through interviews with women categorized as victims of honor-based violence, this essay problematizes the presuppositions marking the narrated violence a distinguishable category including the testimonial format on which it derives. The critique is empirically based on resident-interviews and participant observation in a Danish refuge set to relieve honor-based violence and on resituating the analysis to include the socially, institutionally, nationally, and historically embedded setting of such interviews.

KEYWORDS

Honor-based violence, migrant women, framing violence, narrative position, self-orientalization

From: Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 2020 17 (1)

Editor: Wang Yi