Data and Methods

Abstract

There are human events that unfold in the dimly lit corners of the stage of life. What happens in those shadowy areas remains indistinct and subject to misinterpretation. Women and their affairs are relegated to those places, far from centre stage, far from the spotlight, which is always directed elsewhere, towards others. The life of women, even when filled with tragedy and violence, is played out in those places, where facile judgements, undue simplifications and recurrent misunderstandings reign in a world of stereotypes and indeterminacy. The meaning of violence for women is unclear and the meaning of actions that do not fall into established behavioural schemes eludes us. Those who attempt an explanation tend merely to reveal the misconceptions on which their arguments are founded. Some view women’s entry into the underworld of violence, a world culturally alien to them, as proof of their attainment of equality with the other sex, as proof of the demolition of old barriers erected by the male world to defend its prerogatives; others condemn it in the name of preconceived notions that lack any tenable grounding.

Larvata prodeo: I venture forth with a finger pointed to the mask: I put a mask on my feelings, but with a discreet (and deft) finger I point to the mask.

R. Barthes, Fragments d’un discours amoureux