Scandalisation and taboo: politics and ambivalences of making sexual violence in armed conflict in/visible
21-25 April 2025, Fondation Les Treilles, France
During our last workshop, we observed how sexual violence during the war in Ukraine was made visible and politicized. However, political reports and media coverage provided little information about what actually happened or what those affected experienced. Some victims found themselves in a particularly precarious situation, as they were approached by many different actors, such as national and international investigators, politicians, journalists, etc., and were at risk of being instrumentalized for various purposes.
The fact that particular constellations and narratives of sexual violence are made visible while others are obfuscated, and that it is difficult to know who is doing what to whom, is not new. It can be observed in many (past and present) conflicts. Our knowledge of this violence is also shaped by these processes. During our meeting in Les Treilles we thus explore how conflict-related sexual violence is made in/visible and in what ways it is represented.
I. What comes into our apprehension?
Sometimes sexual violence is publicly discussed and scandalized during an ongoing conflict; sometimes decades after a conflict has ended. Often, only specific perpetrator-victim constellations become visible, while others are ignored or concealed.
- Which constellations are made in/visible, when, why and by whom? Who are the victims that we “see” (or do not see)? Who are the perpetrators? And which forms of sexual violence are (not) described?
Often, victims of this violence are shamed and made to feel complicit in what has happened to them, and thus silenced. In other contexts, however, those affected are urged, even pressured, to disclose the sexual violence they have experienced (e.g., when there is an investigation against one of the warring parties). Who is heard and authorized to speak? And who is silenced?
When victim-survivors are asked about their experiences by journalists and researchers, or are questioned during investigations and tribunals, they often feel that they must follow socially sanctioned scripts. How are victims encouraged to speak (or silenced)? Which experiences are heard? How is their agency represented? What impact do feminist interventions have on this?
Whether and when sexual violence becomes visible (or is concealed) depends on the social and political conditions and interests at a given time. Certain events and the meanings of certain incidents may be publicly debated at one point in time, only to disappear from public consciousness (and sometimes scholarship), and then to reappear at a later date in relation to current sensitivities. What are the contexts in which this violence is made in/visible (political debates, established media, social media, legal proceedings, investigations, NGO reports, grassroots activism, scientific research, etc.)? When and why does a case gain attention and impact? How do we understand political, cultural or religious factors?
- Feminist strategies for making conflict-related sexual violence visible also need to be considered. When are feminist interventions transformative? And how can we understand the ways in which they align with nationalist or racist instrumentalizations?
II. How do the processes of making and spreading stories work?
If we establish that certain aspects of conflict-related sexual violence are made in/visible, then we need to ask how the processes through which this is done operate.
- Who are the actors? When and how do media reports take up the issue? When, why, how and by whom are investigations and reports initiated?
How do particular stories come into being? Which stories become the dominant ones, where, when and why? And what is the duration of a dominant (current or historical) narrative? When and how does it disappear?
How is a case of conflict-related sexual violence depicted at different points in time? Can we detect similarities and differences in patterns of representation (written, oral, visual, audio-visual, artistic)? Do these representations perpetuate and/or disrupt the assumptions that dominate societal discourses around conflict-related sexual violence?
How can we understand the ways in which rumors, propaganda, fake news, the discrediting of victims, etc., start and develop? Does this relate to certain gender-specific narratives about this violence, and if yes in which ways? And what role do myths surrounding sexual violence play? Are they really embraced and have actual effects? Or do they work more as a pretext?
The politics of mediatization work differently at different times and places in history. What are the technical, social and political conditions at a given moment? How are they disseminated? And how are they perceived by which audience?
III. Understanding the sources
Ultimately, these very processes of making visible and invisible shape the sources through which we document, analyze, discuss and understand sexual violence in conflict.
What does this mean for our methodological approaches? What do we understand sources to be (as historians, philosophers, literary scholars, lawyers, journalists, activists, etc)? And how can we account for and understand the social and political effects that both produce a source and shape it's meaning and impact?
Can we deduce what happened from the sources we have, and to what extent? How can we grasp what is left out and obstructed? What is exaggerated and embellished?
Narratives of sexual violence often play a prominent role in societal debates. In the process, certain constellations are dramatized, sensationalized and/or voyeuristically exploited. How can we understand this? Why is it that especially stories of sexual violence are used in this way? What do they represent?
Our responses to stories of conflict-related sexual violence, and rape in particular, are shaped by personal positionality, sensitivities and assumptions that influence both what we 'see' and what we fail to recognize. How do we understand our own 'processes', positionalities, assumptions and emotions?
Are our assumptions and ideational underpinnings gendered? For example, when it comes to recognizing and understanding female or male victims of sexual violence and, in particular, rape, what role do they play? And are such imaginaries and ideations shaped by wider geopolitics and locations in global social and political systems?