The War Against Women - (Critical South) by Rita Segato

Book Synopsis

Recent decades of neoliberal rule have seen authoritarian turns in many governments, and these decades have also been marked by increasing violence against women. The systematic killing of women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, has given way to a violent surge that is worldwide in its scope, concentrated in places where the state's traditional, sovereign functions have broken down. Femicide is no longer just an intimate event: it has become anonymous and systematic, a crime of power. An intensified form of capitalism, the product of a colonial modernity that is still with us, now fuels new wars on women, which destroy society while targeting women's bodies.

Understanding this new, violent turn within patriarchy--which Rita Segato considers the primal form of human domination--means moving patriarchy from the margins to the center of our social analysis. According to Segato, it is only by revitalizing community and repoliticizing domestic space that we can redirect history towards a different destiny. At stake is nothing less than the future of humanity.

Review Quotes

"This excellent translation of Rita Segato's War Against Women is a long-awaited contribution to feminism for English-language audiences. Her brilliance is indispensable and indisputable. She considers violence against women in historical forms, its domestic, public, military, and paramilitary forms, and in its relation to gratuitous cruelty and the formation of masculine subjects. Steeped in the history of violence against women in Latin America, Segato situates this history of violence in a transnational frame, showing the range of powers that seize upon women's bodies with lethal aggression. That history moves in and out of national boundaries, focuses the analysis of femicide in relation to territory, property, and both state and non-state powers, all of whom mobilize specific and converging forms of violence. Segato shows us how to make the case against this horrific war on women in its legal, historical, and psychological dimensions. One can only feel grateful for this indomitable intellect and remarkable passion as it pursues and renews this political commitment to justice."
Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley

About the Author

Rita Segato is Emerit Professor at the University of Brasília and is the author of numerous books, including A Critique of Coloniality: Eight Essays. She was awarded the Frantz Fanon Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021 and the Doctorate Honoris Causa from the University of Salamanca.