Securing the nation through the politics of sexual violence: tracing resonances between Delhi and Cologne

Holzberg, Billy and Raghavan, Priya (2020) Securing the nation through the politics of sexual violence: tracing resonances between Delhi and Cologne. International Affairs, 96 (5). 1189 - 1208. ISSN 0020-5850

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Abstract

Postcolonial and black feminist scholars have long cautioned against the dangerous proximity between the politics of sexual violence and the advancement of nationalist and imperial projects. In this article, we uncover what it is in particular about efforts to address sexual violence that makes them so amenable to exclusionary nationalist projects, by attending to the political aftermaths of the rape of Jyoti Singh in Delhi in 2012, and the cases of mass sexual abuse that took place during New Year's Eve in Cologne in 2015. Tracing the nationalist discourses and policies precipitated in their wake, we demonstrate how across both contexts, the response to sexual violence was ultimately to augment the securitizing power and remit of the state-albeit through different mechanisms, and while producing different subjects of/for surveillance, control and regulation. We highlight how in both cases it is through contemporary resonances of a persistent (post)colonial echo- which enmeshes the normative female body with the idea of the nation-that sexual abuse becomes an issue of national security and the politics of sexual violence becomes tethered to exclusionary nationalisms. Revealing the more general, shared, rationalities that bind the nation to the normative female body while attending to the located political reverberations that make this entanglement so affectively potent in the distinct contexts of India and Germany helps distinguish and amplify transnational and intersectional feminist approaches to sexual violence that do not so readily accommodate nationalist ambitions.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://academic.oup.com/ia
Additional Information:	© 2020 The Authors
Divisions:	Sociology
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Date Deposited:	22 Oct 2020 23:13
Last Modified:	07 Apr 2024 05:30
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/107061

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