This paper challenges the ways in which public/private, physical/non-physical and direct/indirect dichotomies organize feminist research on violence. We argue that the reiteration of these dualisms in feminist research on violence is problematic, not only because they re-establish the hierarchic distinction between the binaries, but such frameworks do not disentangle how gender order produces and normalizes diverse manifestations of violence. In this paper we propose that inquiry into experience of indirect violence within the privacy of the home can enable new insight on how normative violence is configured in culture and society. The paper presents two different types of experiences of violence; one of experiencing war from a distance, and another of emotional abuse in the absence of physical violence. By bringing these under-researched cases into the feminist IR framework, the paper argues that it is possible to recognize how the diverse experiences of violence are similar in terms of experience of trauma, shame and isolation and enable to see how large-scale violence such as war is configured in the experience of private violence in complex ways. We show how the different categories of violence used to organize research do not make sense from the perspective of the target, as violence is always felt emotionally and physically. Moreover, we show how these experiences of violence are entangled with gender norms and normative notions of gender and are situated in the larger continuum of violence. Therefore we argue for a multi-vocal and multi-sited research approach for feminist research in order to grasp the complexity of violence and how the diverse experiences are inter-connected.

Elina Penttinen is a University Lecturer and Director of Master’s programme in Gender Studies, University of Helsinki. She is the PI of a multidisicpilinary research project Incorporating Vulnerability: a non-fragmented approach to feminist research on violence, funded by University of Helsinki Three year grants. She is the author of Gender and Mobility: a critical introduction (2017) Rowman & Littlefield; Joy and International Relations: a new methodology (2013) Routledge, Globalization, Prostitution and Sex-Trafficking: corporeal politics (2008) Routledge.

Ada Schwanck is a Doctoral Candidate in the doctoral programme Gender, Culture, and Society, University of Helsinki. In her dissertation she explores contemporary documentary films and novels depicting asylum seekers’ and refugees’ experiences of war and displacement at the intersections of race, gender and sexuality. She conducts her PhD project as part of Incorporating Vulnerability research project.

Ada Schwanck, University of Helsinki, ada.schwanck@helsinki.fi