IMAGINED(?) IDENTITIES - THE VICTIM AND THE VILLAIN IN AWARENESS RAISING RE-PRESENTATIONS OF WARTIME VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
IMAGINED(?) IDENTITIES - THE VICTIM AND THE VILLAIN IN AWARENESS RAISING RE-PRESENTATIONS OF WARTIME VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Summary/Abstract: In the context of globalizing interactions, instances of wartime violence against women around the world are publicly addressed in a web of international relations and (re)actions. They are mainly consequences of awareness raising representations. Such re-presentations contribute to the development of a humanitarian framework within which identities and power relations between them are constructed. Noble purposes aside, awareness raising re-presentations may engender problematic processes of identity construction. Thus, they position the people re-presented through them in essentialized and monolithic categories identity positions of victim and villain. The following analysis critically engages this issue by means of critical discourse analysis in a theoretical framework intersecting feminism and postcolonialism. The case study focuses on “Western” English mass media re-presentations of wartime violence against women during the last decade’s Congo wars.

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