Subjects of Violence : On Gender and Recognition in Young Men’s Violence Against Women

The dissertation concerns young men’s violence against women partners. It is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with nine men who have been violent against women partners in their youth, and an additional interview with the mother of one of the young men. The method is informed by Hollway and Jefferson’s psychosocial methodology and Hydén’s teller-focused interview approach. The interviewees’ stories of violence are analysed combining psychoanalytic theories of intersubjectivity with an attention to discourses. The aim of the dissertation is to explore men’s experiences of being violent against women partners in youth and to investigate the gendered intersubjective dynamics of young men’s violence against women partners. Jessica Benjamin’s theories on gender and recognition are central to the analyses, and other feminist, psychoanalytic and psychosocial theories are used in the dissertation’s analysis of the men’s stories of violence. The study highlights the role of early relationships, gendered identifications, recognition, and discourses of masculinity and sexuality in using and desisting from violence. Men’s identifications and disidentifications with violent father figures are particularly significant, as are relationships with male peers in youth and the men’s (denied) vulnerabilities. The temporality and liminality of youth are also explored, as the first romantic relationship poses particular challenges to young men who have been exposed to violence and abuse from a young age, or who lack parental support. The time of youth figures as a porous boundary of old and new dependencies, hierarchies and relationship patterns. It is shown how the men’s definitions of violence are also shifting, and the particular nexus of love and aggression within relationships is thus highlighted. Violent situations are demonstrated to denote a breakdown in mutual recognition, which, using Benjamin’s notions, takes the form of oneness – denying difference and alterity – or twoness – over-emphasizing difference and ...