CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Paya Barge, Cristina |
|---|---|
| Title | Austerity, Domestic Violence and Intersectionality: Reimagining Space in the Activism of Sisters Uncut |
| Summary | This thesis examines how Sisters Uncut – a British feminist direct-action group which campaigns against cuts to domestic violence services – utilise space to contest austerity policies, urban privatisation, gendered spatial relations and neoliberal logic of individualism and self-sufficiency. Using fourteen interviews with Sisters Uncut activists and a five-week period of participant observation with a local group in Bristol (UK), I describe how through public protests, occupations and the construction of autonomous spaces, Sisters Uncut temporarily reimagine public and activist spaces as sites where economic and gendered power relations can be transgressed. I frame Sisters Uncut’s activism and articulation of austerity – as a gendered, racial and structural form of violence – within Nancy Fraser’s (1996) framework of social justice, which seeks to reconcile political claims for economic redistribution with identity-based recognition. Using Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) notion of space production, I argue that Sisters Uncut’s activism makes visible the contradictions inherent to the ideological public/private binaries which order space and social relations. I find that through discourses of death and a politics of public mourning Sisters Uncut reinvent public spaces as sites of visceral political contestation, alluding to our collective bodily vulnerabilities and responsibilities. I illustrate how Sisters Uncut meetings and occupations are constructed as safe spaces, empowering and self-reflective sites which nevertheless risk reinstating privileged gendered and racial identities. This thesis points to the importance of space in contesting neoliberal trends and building collective feminist identities. I argue that spatial forms of resistance, such as public protests, occupations and autonomous sites, are essential in making visible how spaces order socioeconomic and gendered relations. Bringing them into light allows us to imagine and construct alternative, more egalitarian forms of social and spatial organisation. |
| Supervisor | Hadley Z. Renkin |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/paya-barge_cristina.pdf |
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