Ivan Jablonka La culture du féminicide: histoire d'une structure de pensée (Traverse, 2025).
Content
Systemic phenomenon: sexual violence, mutilation and killing
Ivan Jablonkas La culture du féminicide: histoire d'une structure de pensée (2025) presents a literary and socio-historical analysis that reveals the cultural centrality of sexualized femicide in Western civilization. Jablonka, known for his works on violence and social structures, identifies the gynocidal culture or femicide culture (“culture du féminicide”). 1 as a universal thought structure that permeates society and prepares the ground for the pleasure derived from female terrorism. The fundamental problem is the ambivalence of this societal obsession: we are culturally “addicted” to sexualized murders while simultaneously condemning these acts as abhorrent. Jablonka defines femicide as “meurtre d'une femme en tant que femme” (murder of a woman as a woman), a premeditated and systemic crime rooted in social inequalities. He theoretically segments this act into three “items gynocidaires”: (1) sexualized violence (rape, prostitution), (2) mutilation (torture, dismemberment), and (3) the actual killing. The central thesis is that this gynocidal culture, through the “idéologie gynocidaire” – the justification of this representation – legitimizes and normalizes femicide from mythology to the present day as “logique qui traverse la société tout entière”.
Nathacha Appanah's novel The night in the heart (2025, compare my Interpretation of the book in this blogBy interweaving her own autofictional story of suffering with the reconstructed fates of two femicide victims (Emma and Chahinez), Appanah achieves a universal analysis of femicide as systemic violence, thereby seeking to reclaim female control over the narrative. Appanah's novel and Ivan Jablonka's sociohistorical study The culture of femicide (2025) share the central analytical observation that femicides are not isolated tragic incidents, but rather systemic phenomena. Appanah interprets the killings of Emma and Chahinez as expressions of a deeply entrenched patriarchal system and underscores the universal danger posed by disturbingly similar perpetrator profiles and patterns of violence characterized by control, jealousy, and isolation. These findings directly correspond to Jablonka's definition of femicide as a deliberate and systemic crime rooted in social, political, and racial inequalities. Jablonka views the crime as a "continuum of sexual violence" that has already fragile victims since birth. Appanah further elaborates on this continuum by dissecting the mechanisms of Grip (Dominance and control), which escalates from subtle manipulation to physical enslavement. Both authors thus locate the cause of the killings not in individual pathology, but in a structural acceptance of violence against women.
The difference in narrative strategy is a direct expression of Jablonka's call for a "counter-culture of féminicide." Appanah chooses a stance of uncompromising representation, creating an "imaginary space" or "imaginary chamber" in which she gathers the three male perpetrators. Within this space, she deliberately rejects "psychologizing explanations," as these only serve "to exonerate the guilty, evoke empathy, and erase their victims." Instead, the perpetrators are to be "delivered to history" and silenced. This stands in stark contrast to the "idéologie gynocidaire" that Jablonka criticizes in art and the media as a justification: there, femicide is often trivialized as a "drame passionnel" or as an act of "déséquilibré," resulting in cultural benevolence ("bienveillance culturelle"). Appanah's decision to rewrite her own sexual trauma ("la chose") and ultimately remain deliberately silent is an act of self-empowerment and resistance that reveals the limits of language in the face of the unspeakable and preserves the dignity of the victims – a literary approach that corresponds to Jablonka's demand for a "regard orphelin" that avoids the aestheticization of violence.
Contemporary Literature and Femicide
Jablonka's analysis of the "culture of féminicide" focuses on how the representation of femicide permeates historical, artistic, and media spheres. Within this comprehensive examination of Western civilization, specific examples from contemporary French literature are presented that either reinforce or actively counteract gynocidal ideology. Key examples are drawn from contemporary French literature and its role in the context of femicide:
Laëtitia ou la Fin des hommes (Ivan Jablonka himself, 2016)
Jablonka mentions his own work Laëtitia ou la Fin des hommes (2016), in which he analyzed the murder of 18-year-old Laëtitia Perrais. Jablonka characterizes Laëtitia's murder as a "féminicide," at a time when this word was still very uncommon in the French language. He demonstrates that the crime was the culmination of a series of social, psychological, physical, and sexual acts of violence that had made her fragile since birth. Femicide is understood here not as an isolated anecdote of a "mad" man, but as the logical consequence of systemic violence and female vulnerability.
The book serves as the basis for Jablonka's further work and represents a socio-historical case study that aims to examine crime in its systemic context. gender-to locate it in context and combat the "culture of féminicide" by exposing its mechanisms.
Fuck me (Virginie Despentes, 1994)
Virginie Despentes' work is discussed as a literary act of protest and role reversal to denounce the logic of femicide. Jablonka mentions that Despentes exposes systemic violence by reversing the logic of femicide. Despentes has the character Nadine kill her roommate, who was subject to the heteropatriarchal order ( sa colocataire soumise à l'ordre hétéro-patriarcal).
By depicting a woman who kills, Despentes realistically portrays a woman's capacity to inflict death, which can be interpreted as an "act of legal resistance" against patriarchal logic. It serves as an example of a literary way to combat systemic violence and develop the "female gaze" or a "counter-pedagogy" by engaging with the female perspective. addressed in a context marked by violence.
Whore (Nelly Arcan, 2001)
The work of the Canadian-French author Nelly Arcan (Whore (published in Paris) is discussed in the context of the aestheticization of violence and mass culture. Arcan establishes a direct link between the gynocidal tradition (fait divers, magic, horror film) and reality. She describes the voyeuristic mise-en-scène of women and the threat of destruction ( sombre rêveusement), which surrounds her in her cultural “bath” (“bain culturel”). Arcan herself, who experienced disrespect and misogyny on talk shows, suffered a “mise à mort” at the hands of the media.
Arcan identifies the trivialization and aestheticization of femicide as a cultural routine. She demonstrates that the murder of a woman is often staged theatrically, literarily, and cinematically even before it is examined by a forensic pathologist. Her work serves as a critical voice, revealing how consumer culture incorporates sexualized crime as a "routine."
Au non des femmes (Jennifer Tamas, 2023)
Although it is an essay that influenced Jablonka's research, it serves as an important contemporary contribution to the French debate on the topic. Tamas analyzes how the "figure de la 'belle endormie'" (figure of the "beautiful sleeper") reinforces sexualized fantasies of violence in the present, culminating in rape in the contemporary context of chemical coercion ("soumission chimique")—compare my Articles on this blog about the case of Gisèle Pelicot in Claire Berest, La Chair des autresTamas draws parallels between ancient myths (such as the rape of Cnidus-Venus) and modern crime to show that in the era of “communication quasi instantanée”, women are dehumanized and turned into “statufié” objects.
The essay demonstrates the continued validity of the gynocidal scheme in contemporary culture and highlights the role of literature and discourse in constructing the appearance of consent to sexual violence.
These examples show that contemporary French literature – both in Jablonka's own socio-historical analysis and in the works of feminist authors such as Despentes and Arcan – portrays femicide either as a systemic evil (Laetitia) addresses and exposes, or presents it as an aestheticized spectacle (Whore) or form of resistance (Fuck me) staged to counteract the “idéologie gynocidaire”.
Is there also an androcidic culture?
Jablonka defines femicide as the murder of a woman as a woman ("meurtre d'une femme en tant que femme"), a premeditated and systemic crime rooted in social, political, and racial inequalities. According to her, the primary perpetrators are men, as the "culture of féminicide" is perpetuated by a specific form of masculinity that kills. The majority of these crimes are committed by partners or family members, such as an abandoned husband. The spectrum ranges from historical figures like Gilles de Rais and Henry VIII to urban serial killers like Jack l'Éventreur and perpetrators during wartime. For Jablonka, femicide is the logic that permeates all of society, and it aims at the sexualized destruction of a woman ("destruction sexualisée d'une femme").
The primary victims of femicide are consequently women, who are often reduced to objects of destruction in these narratives. The victims come from all eras and social classes: from the anonymous concubine of the Levite, whose body is dismembered to solidify the brotherhood of men ("fraternisation des hommes"), to mythological nymphs who are hunted to death and symbolically mutilated (like Philomela), to the prostitutes of the 19th century. According to Jablonka, femicide is defined by the interplay of three "items gynocidaires": (1) sexualized violence (rape, forced nudity), (2) mutilation (torture, dismemberment), and (3) the actual murder. The sexualized destruction turns the victim into a “damaged commodity” (“marchandise détériorée”) or an “automaton with a vagina” (“automate avec vagin”), whose suffering is often aestheticized.
Jablonka acknowledges the existence of other victims, particularly men who fall victim to androcide (the killing of a man as a man). Men are primarily victims in wars (as "masculine massacres") or in political and social rivalries. Male mythological figures such as Actaeon or Pentheus are also killed and dismembered, sometimes experiencing the gynocidal pattern (sexualization, mutilation, death). However, Jablonka emphasizes the asymmetry of the violence. In contrast to female victims, whose deaths are sexualized and degraded, the death of men is culturally euphemized and idealized. Male victims such as Christ, Hector, or fallen soldiers (the "poilus") are given a sacred aura and elevated to the status of heroes, thus negating the physical degradation.
Regarding other perpetrators, Jablonka's analysis identifies women who kill primarily in literary and mythological contexts. The Bible praises women like Judith and Yael as active protagonists and resistance fighters who kill or cause men to lose. Similarly, in mythology, Pentheus is dismembered by his own mother and the Furies. However, these acts often represent exceptions to the prevailing pattern. Jablonka demonstrates that the violence driving the "culture of féminicide" does not stem from this exception. The killing of a man, even by women, is part of a male rivalry ("rivalité à mort au sein du masculin") or serves to punish transgressors, while the systematic, sexualized destruction of women remains the constant cultural signature of male dominance.
Chapter analysis: Structure, argumentation and outcome
La nuit de Guibéa (The Night of Gibea)
The argumentation in this chapter relies on the contrapuntal analysis of ancient texts (the Bible and Greco-Roman mythology) to lay the foundation for the gynocidal schema. Jablonka primarily examines the story of the Levite's concubine (Judges 19), in which all three gynocidal "items" (rape, death, dismemberment) are paradigmatically enacted. The anonymous and silent victim is declared to be damaged merchandise ("marchandise détériorée"), whose dismembered body serves to unite men ("fraternisation des hommes") and strengthens the cohesion of Israel. The lesson of antiquity is the conviviality of femicide ("convivialité du féminicide"). Femicide, or the abduction or rape of women (as in the case of the Sabine women), becomes the glue that forges male alliances. In this patriarchal system, rape is often enough to secure male dominance; murder is not always necessary.
Ouvrir la sainte, torturer la sorcière (Open the saint, torture the witch)
This chapter marks a historical turning point (c. 1250–1350) in which the first coherent culture of femicide emerged. The central argument illuminates the convergence of religious piety, the emerging medical dissection, and the culture of distrust towards devout women. A key example is the postmortem dissection of Clare of Montefalco (1308), whose body was opened by men to search for divine proof (a crucifix in her heart). This resembles the torture of Christian female martyrs, which is invariably sexualized and described in more detail than that of male martyrs. The “de-madonization” of women and their de-individualization are thus promoted. The dissection of the body now serves to uncover the secrets of women ("secrets de femmes"), anticipating the later inquisitorial logic: the dissection of pious women and the torture of criminals or witches follow the same logic of the intrusion of the male order into the female body ("effraction de l'ordre masculin dans le corps féminin"). The story of Nastagio in Boccaccio's decamerone This pattern is reinforced by the repetition of the “massacre toujours recommencé”, which is intended to train women to be obedient.
Le théâtre anatomique (The Anatomical Theater)
Jablonka argues that the Renaissance (16th century) added a second pillar of gynocidal culture through the establishment of scientific anatomy. The female body, particularly the uterus (“matrice”), became “terra incognita” and thus an object of scientific exploration. The argument focuses on the “culture de la dissection,” which aestheticized the nudity and fragmentation of the female body. Vesalius’s frontispiece on the uterus is one example. Fabrica (1543), which depicts the dissection of an anonymous, naked woman before a gathering of men in a public theater. The woman becomes the “ultra-nue” (ultra-naked) and her body a public performance. In parallel, Jablonka examines the “Blasons anatomiques du corps féminin” (1543), which lyrically dissects the body into individual parts (Being, Con). Poetry becomes “verbal anatomy.” The displacement of woman as a sexual object becomes the norm through the intertwining of anatomy, art, and eroticism. Woman is transformed into a collection of pieces (puzzle), the reconstruction of which requires male creative power (poièsis) demonstrated.
L'érotisme de la morte (The Eroticism of the Dead)
This chapter deals with the 17th and 18th centuries, in which the "culture of porno-gore" arose through the eroticization of the dead and the mania for "venusection." The argument reveals how the female body, whether dead or not, was forced to disclose its ultimate secrets. Even fairy tales such as Bluebeard (Perrault) and Le Roi Porc They depict sexualized violence, in which a woman, the survivor, escapes her fate and resists male misconduct. Technically, the obsession of wax modeling ("matrice, obsession de la céroplastie")—the uterus—is transformed into a manipulable object through removable "anatomical Venuses." Sade's system constitutes the "gynocidal acmé" by theorizing torture, rape, and murder as expressions of male omnipotence over the female "receptacle." The target zone here is the abdomino-pelvic area. The woman is ultimately reduced to a disassemblable machine, whose "ultra-nudity" extends to internal pornography. Sade synthesizes all the elements (sexualization, will to destroy, anatomy) into a "sadic synthesis" that highlights femicide as "destructive lubrication."
La culture de l'androcide (The culture of androcide)
This interlude serves to examine the symmetry of violence. Jablonka notes that androcide (the killing of a man as a man) exists (often in the context of war or political rivalry). The crucial distinction, however, lies in cultural representation. While, for example, men can be killed and mutilated (Actaeon, Pentheus), their deaths are systematically euphemized and idealized in art. The depiction of extreme injuries (such as the crucified Christ) leads to glorification, not dishonor. Femicide and androcide are not symmetrical. The male body is a perfect whole ("tout parfait"), almost always spared the humiliating sexualization of violence. A beautiful death ("belle mort") is reserved for him, whereas the murder of a woman remains a "sexualized murder in which a man destroys a woman" ("meurtre sexualisé par lequel un homme anéantit une femme").
Un automate avec vagin (An automaton with a vagina)
The argument focuses on the 19th century, characterized by urbanization and the massification of crime reporting. Femicide becomes a news story ("fait divers"), its setting the big city. Thus, the murders of Helen Jewett and Mary Rogers establish the forensic imaginary ("imaginaire forensique") and inspire the detective novel (Poe). Simultaneously, gynecology conquers the female interior with instruments like the speculum, enabling the public performance of female intimacy ("performance publique de l'intimité féminine"). In neurology, hysteria patients (as in Charcot's work at the Salpêtrière) are staged before a male audience as women becoming automatons ("femme devenant automate"). Fantastic literature addresses this through Olympia, the destroyed automaton in E.T.A. Hoffmann's novel. SandmannIn the 19th century, woman becomes an "automate avec vagin," a passive "woman-mannequin" whose passions and secrets are made visible and controllable through scientific and media tools.
The section on hysterics serves to deepen the automaton motif. The hysterical women in Charcot's service are subjected to extreme treatments (electric shocks, ovarian compression, needle pricks). The hysterical woman is a cultural construct that combines the traditions of martyrdom, witch hunts, and dissection in the modern era. She becomes a "woman-machine" whose symptoms are interpreted as a mechanical reaction. Psychoanalysis (Freud) later offers a counter-position by encouraging women to speak instead of invasively examining their bodies.
Le féminicide, un divertissement de masse (Feminicide as mass entertainment)
This chapter illustrates the democratization of gynocidal culture around the turn of the 20th century. The mass media, especially the tabloids, turned femicide into an attraction. The crimes of Jack the Ripper (Jack l'Éventreur) solidified the "forensic imaginary." The public spectacle in the Parisian morgue became a popular tourist destination, where dismembered corpses were displayed. Waxwork displays (Spitzner) presented the "anatomical Venus" as a semi-erotic "beauty in sleep," semi-dissected organ puzzle. Magical tricks like "La Femme sciée en deux" (The Woman Sciated in Two) staged femicide symbolically and harmlessly as mass entertainment, a reaction to the growing female emancipation movement (suffragettes). Femicide became "mass entertainment." The symbolic violence in the magic tricks and in the Grand Guignol serves as “messages subliminaux” (subliminal messages) to warn women of the risks of independence.
La modernité gynocidaire (The gynocidal modernity)
Jablonka illuminates how femicide became part of the avant-garde in 20th-century art. Examples: The “lust murder” in the Weimar Republic (Dix, Grosz) reinterprets the mass killings of war as violence against women, who are dismissed as “creatures of lust.” Surrealists like Picasso and Bellmer deconstruct the female body to the point of dislocation, with Bellmer’s dolls embodying the morbid sensuality of wax models and the perversity of Sade. The 1960 revolution in cinema ( Psycho, Le Voyeur) makes femicide explicit and stages the gynocidal scheme. The Italian Detective stories (eg TorsoThey established the genre and often misogynistically justified the murders with the victims' "too free" sexuality. The "final girl" (the male survivor) became an icon. "Necro-pornography" became the norm in pop culture. Artistic "grand art" and serial entertainment processed femicide as a "machine to suffer" and as a fatal, yet narrative, element of modernity.
Literature and Femicide
Jablonka considers literature to be a central domaine de création, which exists alongside myths, poetry, painting, and film. He argues that literature plays a crucial role in establishing and maintaining the gynocidal culture ("culture du féminicide"), which organizes the sexualized destruction of women ("destruction sexualisée des femmes"). The sexualized murder of women ("viol-tuer des femmes") is a constant "script" or "passage obligé" in our narratives, books, and images, extending from mythology to the present day. Literary texts perform an "underground work of justification" ("travail de justification souterrain"), giving value to the crime by presenting it as a narrative and visual object of consumption, thereby turning evil into something positive.
Even in the foundations of Western literature, theological and mythological texts establish the gynocidal schema. Jablonka examines the story in the Bible of the Levite's concubine (Judges 19), who is raped, murdered, and dismembered. This paradigmatic crime, within an archaic narrative framework, serves the purpose of male brotherhood ("fraternisation des hommes"). The script of "viol-meurtre" (violence-murder) is also found in Ovid's Metamorphoses in the form of persecution and metaphysical death, for example, when the nymphs Daphne and Syrinx are hunted. The story of Philomela articulates the full sequence of femicide: rape, mutilation (her tongue is cut out), and the loss of human existence through transformation.
During the Middle Ages, literature's role as a vehicle for the ideology of distrust towards women became entrenched. This was particularly evident in hagiography, especially in the works of Jacques de Voragine. The Golden Legend (Around 1260), female martyrdom is sexualized and depicted in detail, with saints confronted with attempted sexual assault, public display of their nakedness, and mutilation (for example, of the breasts). Fabliaux and pastourelles often treat sexual violence in a comical or frivolous manner. Boccaccio's work represents the culmination of this trend. Decameron (mid-14th century), where the story of Nastagio degli Onesti objectifies the gynocidal scheme as a "massacre toujours recommencé" in literary form. This endless act of violence is intended to enforce the obedience of women and serves as a warning.
The Renaissance closely integrated literature with anatomy, creating a second pillar of gynocidal culture. Poetry, in particular, became a "verbal anatomy." This manifests itself in the Blasons anatomiques du corps feminine (1543), which lyrically dissects the female body into individual parts (such as "con" or "tétin"). This "sexualized morcellation" serves as an expression of male desire and as a "lover's victory". The dissection of the body into a "puzzle of detached pieces" allows the man to symbolically dismantle the woman, to recreate her from the elements ( recreate) and they as a trophy of creative power ( poièsisto present.
With the advent of modernity in the 17th and 19th centuries, literature transformed its portrayal of violence. Fairy tales like Perrault's "La Barbe bleue" (1697) presented the murder of women as a gruesome secret and a moral warning against female curiosity and disobedience. In the 19th century, with urbanization and the emergence of newsUrban femicides (such as Helen Jewett or Mary Rogers) inspire fantasy and emerging crime fiction. Authors like Edgar Allan Poe ( The Mystery of Marie RogetThey employ literary and forensic techniques to immortalize eroticization, torture, and dismemberment in their narratives. This transforms the murdered woman into a "muse supplicée" or "déchet" (waste), inspiring the male detective or poet to his talents.
In the 20th century, femicide became a central element of the artistic avant-garde and mass entertainment. In the Weimar Republic, "lust murder" was established by Expressionist artists as an expression of modernity in art. The Italian Detective stories (Thriller) films in the 1970s institutionalized femicide as a genre. Titles such as Elle est morte nue or Légèrement morte The “necromantic pornography” of the 20th century demonstrates that literature celebrates murder as a form of sexual entertainment. These works often propagate the perpetrator’s misogynistic justification that the victims, as “vulgar dolls of flesh and blood” (“vulgaires poupées de chair et de sang”), deserved their deaths.
Jablonka's analysis concludes that literature transforms and disseminates femicide as a "normal, entertaining, and moral spectacle." The works are so successful because they provide a narrative-visual consumer object that gives the audience a sense of "social well-being." Despite this dominant "ideology of gynocidality," Jablonka emphasizes that not all artists fall victim to culture. He sees the possibility of a "counter-culture of femicide," which, as in the work of Artemisia Gentileschi or David Lynch, rejects the aestheticization of violence and reveals the systemic nature of the crime. The aim is to no longer view women as fragmented "choice pieces."
Dissenting voices against a patriarchal logic
Alongside the dominant "culture of féminicide," Ivan Jablonka also acknowledges the presence of dissenting voices and resistance in literature and art. He identifies a "counter-culture of féminicide" that opposes this way of thinking by rejecting the aestheticization and trivialization of violence. The goal of this counter-culture is to no longer accept the systematic destruction and sexualization of women, but rather to expose systemic violence and respect the dignity of the victims.
An early example of literary resistance can already be found in the fairy tales of the 17th century. During Charles Perrault's Bluebeard While the murder of wives is a recurring theme, authors like Madame d'Aulnoy and Madame de Murat soften the depiction of violence. D'Aulnoy even has the deceased wives resurrected at the end of her fairy tale. However, the most important contribution of these authors is the creation of the figure of the "survivante" (survivor). These heroines not only overcome their fear but also dare to resist male tyranny. Perrault's heroine in Bluebeard She can count on the “sororité” (sisterhood) of her biological sister Anne and thus escapes the fate of her predecessors, which is interpreted as an early reflection on female emancipation.
In later feminist literature and theory of the 20th century, protest manifests itself through a reshaping of gaze and language. Jablonka quotes Luce Irigaray, who denounces the male “speculum-speculation” that violently opens, fractures, and probes the female body. Similarly, Monique Wittig praises in The Lesbian Body a new erotic poetics that unanimates the entire spectrum of female bodily substances – “cyprine bave salive morve sueur larmes cérumen urine fèces excréments sang” – and thus exists outside the heterosexual, dissecting logic of male gazebo exists.
Another important literary protest consists of the reversal of roles and the rewriting of narratives. Jablonka cites Virginia Woolf, who symbolically eliminates the “angel of the hearth,” and Virginie Despentes (Fuck me), whose work realistically depicts the killing of a female roommate subject to the patriarchal order. These literary acts demonstrate that women are also capable of killing, which Jablonka interprets as an expression of legal resistance against patriarchal logic. Authors like Angela Carter also subvert literary traditions by having Little Red Riding Hood sever the wolf's paw with a hunting knife.
Female artists like the painter Artemisia Gentileschi and the painter Frida Kahlo also used their art to oppose the aesthetics of femicide. In her works (such as Judith's Beheading of Holofernes), Gentileschi processed the trauma of her own rape and rebelled against male dominance in art. Kahlo, with her painting A few small bites She expresses her solidarity with the victims by ironically adopting the words of a murderer who downplayed femicide as "a few small stabs".
Even in the realm of popular culture, voices are resisting. Country singer Dolly Parton and Nancy Sinatra are reinventing the traditional murder ballad new, by adopting the perspective of the victims. Furthermore, there are authors who expose systemic violence in their works instead of aestheticizing it: David Lynch, for example, exposes in his films the tyrannical rule of the patriarchy, which lurks beneath a respectable veneer. Roberto Bolaño describes in his novel 2666 the systematic violence against women in Ciudad Juárez and the corrupt, misogynistic unity between killers and police.
Functions of the ideology of femicide
Jablonka's main achievement lies in defining gynocidal culture as a "structure de pensée" that consists not only of ideas but also of practical, technical, and institutional realities. This thought structure traces the "destruction sexualisée d'une femme" through the centuries. The ideology of femicide ("idéologie gynocidaire") fulfills three primary social functions:
1./ Divertissement (Entertainment): The murder of women is an aesthetic spectacle that provides pleasure, horror, and cathartic cleansing.
2./ Purge: The murder of women classified as "dangerous" or "too emancipated" serves to purify the community and cement male coherence.
3. Order: The depiction of femicide serves as a deterrent and a means of social control. Disobedient women are punished, thereby warning the "pure" women and restoring the gender order.
The consistent feature of this culture lies in the crimino-anatomical gaze, which does not censor the female body but rather exhibits and "vaginizes" it to the point of "ultra-nudité." Women are reduced to their genitals, which are considered a publicly accessible site of spectacle. Ultimately, femicide is a "normal, entertaining, and moral spectacle," whose apparent happy ending (the punishment of the guilty) restores social balance.
Jablonka concludes with a call for a "counter-culture of féminicide" that resists this way of thinking by no longer viewing women as fragmented "choice pieces." Jablonka summarizes this stance in the demand for an "orphan's gaze." This gaze eludes both the voyeuristic (male) and the empathic (female) perspectives. It focuses neither on glorifying the perpetrator nor on expressing sympathy for the victim, but rather on preserving the dignity of those femicided and recognizing the ultimate emptiness created by femicide. Through this alternative perspective, artists like Natasha Trethewey and James Ellroy can honor the memory of their murdered mothers in their memoirs, thus combating the double injustice of a destroyed life and programmed oblivion ("double injustice d'une vie détruite et d'un oubli programmé").
The book demonstrates, in an academically sound manner, how the sexualized destruction of women is not just a series of crimes, but a deeply ingrained cultural syntax that persists from the Bible to Netflix.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- "The term 'femicide' was coined by feminists in the USA in the 1990s to describe the killing of women because of their gender. Feminists in Mexico further developed the term and added the syllable 'ni' to femicide to express that it is not the murder of women as individualized cases, but a mass crime." https://contre-les-feminicides.ch/femizid-oder-feminizid/, December 21, 2023.>>>
