Sexual violence as a strategy of enclosure: an anti-origin story
A BSA Sociology, Psychoanalysis & the Psychosocial Study Group Seminar Series
7 July 2025 (15:00-16:00 BST)
Online
About the Event
The Sociology, Psychoanalysis & the Psychosocial Study Group seminar series on violence has been running since November 2024. The seminar series is held online and normally takes place on the first Monday of the month (there may be some exceptions around UK holidays).
Speaker: Professor Alison Phipps
Speaker bio: Alison Phipps is Professor of Sociology at Newcastle University and Honorary Professor in the Centre for Women’s Studies at the University of York. She is author of Me, Not You: the trouble with mainstream feminism, published in 2020 by Manchester University Press. Her forthcoming book is called Sexual Violence in Racial Capitalism, also with Manchester University Press.
Event Summary: This paper explores a range of stories about the origins of gender domination and sexual violence. First, sociobiological thought experiments that centre sexed bodily differences. Second, sociocultural theorisations of the emergence of kinship systems through the exchange of women. Third, socioeconomic and sociopolitical analyses that describe a commodification of reproductive capacity with the birth of organised production, creating gender relations that were solidified by the development of warlike states. Based on these latter origin stories, I characterise sexual violence as a strategy of enclosure in which the generative body is territory to be used for political-economic ends. I conceptualise enclosure as an ongoing and continual process: violence is necessary because patriarchal power is never absolute. This is not offered as a definitive account or alternative origin story of sexual violence, but is an attempt to consider its function within shifting and contested economic, social, and political relations.
Registration
This event is free to attend but registration is required.