
Why Don't You Just Talk To Him? Looks At The Broad Political Contexts In Which Violence, Specifically Domestic Violence, Occurs. Kathleen Arnold Argues That Liberal And Enlightenment Notions Of The Social Contract, Rationality And Egalitarianism -- The Ideas That Constitute Norms Of Good Citizenship -- Have An Inextricable Relationship To Violence. According To This Dynamic, Targets Of Abuse Are Not Rational, Make Bad Choices, Are Unable To Negotiate With Their Abusers, Or Otherwise Violate Norms Of The Social Contract; They Are, Thus, Second-class Citizens. In Fact, As Arnold Shows, Drawing From Nietzsche And Foucault's Theories Of Power And Arguing Against Much Of The Standard Policy Literature On Domestic Violence, The Very Mechanisms That Purportedly Help Targets Of Domestic Abuse Actually Work To Compound The Problem By Exacerbating (or Ignoring) The Power Differences Between The Abuser And The Abused. The Book Argues That A Key To Understanding How To Prevent Domestic Violence Is Seeing It As A Political Rather Than A Personal Issue, With Political Consequences. It Seeks To Challenge Enlightenment Ideas About Intimacy That Conceive Of Personal Relationships As Mutual, Equal And Contractual. Put Another Way, It Challenges Policy Ideas That Suggest That Targets Of Abuse Can Simply Choose To Leave Abusive Relationships Without Other Personal Or Economic Consequences, Or That There Is A Clear And Consistent Level Of Help Once They Make The Choice To Leave. Asking Why Don't You Just Talk To Him? Is In Reality A Suggestion Riven With Contradictions And False Choices. Arnold Further Explores These Issues By Looking At Two Key Asylum Cases That Highlight Contradictions Within The Government's Treatment Of Foreigners And That Of Long-term Residents. These Cases Expose Problematic Assumptions In The Approach To Domestic Violence More Generally. Exposing Major Injustices From The Point Of View Of Domestic Violence Targets, This Book Promises To Generate Further Debate.
This book investigates the core question of why liberal and Enlightenment-based social contract theories inadvertently perpetuate domestic violence by framing it as a personal failure rather than a systemic political issue. Kathleen R. Arnold, a scholar in political theory, utilizes a critical framework rooted in the works of Nietzsche and Foucault to deconstruct standard policy approaches to abuse. She argues that current societal norms regarding rationality and citizenship effectively re-victimize targets of abuse by ignoring the inherent power imbalances that prevent victims from simply leaving their situations.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Scholars and policy analysts frequently note the academic density of the prose and the provocative nature of Arnold's challenge to mainstream domestic violence literature. Experts highlight this as a significant contribution to the intersection of political theory and gender-based violence studies.
Page Count:
256
Publication Date:
2015-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
019026229X
ISBN-13:
9780190262297
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