EDSOC Research Seminar - Satu Venäläinen, University of Helsinki - Gendered violence and the dilemmatic dynamics of silencing, reversing and reproducing gendered positions

Satu Venäläinen, University of Helsinki

Title: Gendered violence and the dilemmatic dynamics of silencing, reversing and reproducing gendered positions

The internet, in particular, has become a site of heated debate around the issue of gendered violence. In many ways, these debates revolve around questions of gender, power, and equality, to which various meanings get attached by different parties engaging in the discussions. In my presentation, I will draw on analyses of online discussions about gendered violence in Finland that highlight paradoxical and dilemmatic dynamics in denying the relevance of gender in talk about violence on one hand, and simultaneously reproducing gendered, racialised and ethnicised hierarchies based on difference, on the other. I will apply concepts from critical discursive psychology – such as ideological dilemmas, interpretative repertoires and subject positions – in a closer exploration of how these dynamics unfold in online discussions. I argue that what these online discussions exemplify is a narrative erasure based on, firstly, rendering the effects of power invisible by positing equality as an ontological fact, and, second, silencing critical voices by constructing them as epistemologically illegitimate. Finally, I will set the meanings and patterns reiterated in online contexts into a dialogue with those evident in the talk of professionals working with violence in the context of focus group interviews conducted in various locations in Finland, and by so doing will critically engage with the possibilities of recognising gendered power differences in the Finnish context that is characterised by valorising neutrality as a means for achieving equality.

Bio:
Satu Venäläinen (PhD in Social Sciences) is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Social Psychology at University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests include meanings attached to gender, discourses of violence, and affective and discursive dynamics in identity constitution. Her recent research has specifically focused on interrelations between publicly circulating meanings of gender and violence and enactments of gendered identities. She currently works in the research project “Social Inequalities and Discourses of Violence: Current Controversies in Finnish Online Forums and among Welfare State Professionals”. Her articles appear in Men & Masculinities, Feminist Media Studies, Feminism & Psychology, European Journal of Women’s Studies and NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research.