Contesting the Utopia: Power and Resistance in Abusive Lesbian Relationships
Giorgio, Grace Ann
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/87500
Description
Title
Contesting the Utopia: Power and Resistance in Abusive Lesbian Relationships
Author(s)
Giorgio, Grace Ann
Issue Date
2001
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Kal Alston
Department of Study
Speech Communication
Discipline
Speech Communication
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Sociology, Criminology and Penology
Language
eng
Abstract
This dissertation responds to these concerns by investigating the dissonance between the lived experience of lesbian battering and the dominant domestic violence discourses. The work's title describes the underlying power of utopic understandings of lesbian relationships as articulated by the vestiges of lesbian-feminist philosophy that permeate the multiple sites of power relations in domestic violence contexts. Each chapter addresses these contexts as sites of negotiation for battered lesbians whose narratives of abuse indicate vast injustices from traditional support systems and their own communities. Throughout the dissertation, I argue that battered lesbians traverse complex networks of power relations, which they also resist in individually private as well as expressly public ways.
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