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How to Tell a New Story About Battering
Francesca Polletta*
University of California, Irvine
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: polletta{at}uci.edu.
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Abstract |
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As Evan Stark observes, getting domestic violence against women recognized as coercive control will require a major effort of storytelling. Women’s accounts of subjugation have to be narrated in a way that is both true to their experiences and capable of eliciting public understanding, sympathy, and action. This essay draws on an interdisciplinary literature on narrative to show why doing that poses such a formidable challenge. In lieu of the tragic form that has dominated battered women’s storytelling, and in lieu of the quest and mystery forms that appear in Stark’s own accounts, this article argues for using a rebirth story line. This genre, which has affinities with the fairytales Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, seems an unlikely vehicle for asserting battered women’s combination of victimization and agency. Drawing on the stories told by battered women as part of a successful reform effort, however, this article shows how women have used the form effectively.
First published on October 22, 2009, doi:10.1177/1077801209347093
Violence Against Women 2009;15:1490.
A more recent version of this article appeared on December 1, 2009
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