The violence of norms: resisting repertoires of gender violence in post-conflict Colombia

ABSTRACT

Feminist scholarship on gender violence in Latin America has elucidated its ubiquity and deep entrenchment within many societies, from the colonial encounter until the present day. As such, it remains important to enquire into the relationship between sociocultural norms and gender violence: how norms enable and legitimate gender violence, and how these norms can be reconfigured to resist gender violence. This article draws on Judith Butler’s work on normative violence to explore how norms enabled, legitimated and obscured the distinct repertoires of gender violence in Colombian civilian society and left-wing rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Butler’s theorization on how norms can be challenged, both through different gender performances and the revision of criteria of gender intelligibility, is then extended to understanding the emergence of resistance to gender violence in The Common Alternative Revolutionary Force, the political party which the FARC transitioned into in 2017.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender violence
• Judith Butler
• resistance
• Colombia

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the insightful and constructive comments from the two anonymous reviewers which helped to improve this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. As ‘the I for intersex is typically included in Latin American contexts’ (Bueno-Hansen, 2018, p. 127), I will use the term LGBTI unless the source I am citing uses another acronym.

2. Although first published in 1990, I reference the 2006 edition of Gender Trouble throughout, as it contains the 1999 preface by Butler in which she elaborates on her conceptualization of the violence performed by gender norms.

3. All translations from Spanish to English are my own.

4. Marxist armed group the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissidents from the FARC remain active in the country.

5. This task has been assumed by Colombian LGBT movements Colombia Diversa and Caribe Afirmativo.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/P000703/1].

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Bates

Jennifer Bates is a PhD candidate at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Her current research explores the feminist politics of female ex-combatants from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in post-conflict Colombia.