Jana Faber

Legal Studies in the Context of Feminicides

Feminicides are the most extreme form of gender-based violence against women; in Germany, every two to three days, a woman is killed in an act of violence that is considered a feminicide. In my doctoral project, I analyse the political and legal debates in the context of feminicides, using the legal struggles approach, which takes a social theory perspective on struggles in the legal field.

Feminicides are processed under criminal law in the German legal system. In the field of criminal law, actors mobilise the symbolic power of the law to condemn feminicide and to recognise the gender-specific, misogynistic dimension of these killings. In doing so, they face the problem of the individualisation and, ergo, externalisation of social problems that is necessary in the logic of criminal law, as well as the entailed state monopoly legitimate physical violence.Taking this tension as a starting point, an empirical case study examines the legal discourse, selected legal cases, and activist-feminist mobilisations in the context of feminicide trials. Feminist and other critiques of criminal law are discussed in relation to legal-theoretical considerations on the specific and dialectical materiality of law.