Feminist Theory of Violence

Françoise Vergès is a political scientist, activist, historian, film writer, and public educator. She is the author of A Decolonial Feminism, A Feminist History of Violence and A Programme of Absolute Disorder. She is also a senior research fellow at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation, University College London. She lives in Paris.Melissa Thackway is an independent researcher and translator. She lectures in African Cinema at Sciences-Po and INALCO in Paris. Her recent translations include A Feminist Theory of Violence by Françoise Vergès, Contemporary African Cinema by Olivier Barlet, Tropical Dream Palaces: Cinema-Going in Colonial West Africa by Odile Goerg and African Diasporic Cinema: Aesthetics of Reconstruction by Daniela Ricci.

'In this robust, decolonial challenge to carceral feminism, Francoise Vergès elucidates why a structural approach to violence is needed. If we wish to understand how racial capitalism is linked to the proliferation of intimate and state violence directed at women and gender-nonconforming people, we need to look no further than Vergès' timely analysis'

• Introduction 1. Neoliberal Violence 2. Race, Patriarchy, and the Politics of Women's Protection 3. Punitive Feminism, an Impasse Conclusion - For a Decolonial Feminist Politics Notes