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Rhetoric Of Silence: Some Reflections On Law, Literature, And Social Violence, James A. Epstein
Rhetoric Of Silence: Some Reflections On Law, Literature, And Social Violence, James A. Epstein
Vanderbilt Law Review
Martha Minow suggests the importance of looking outside of court-rooms and the law to find ways of speaking about social and family violence. Her article underscores the difficulties of breaking silence, and yet the power to impose silence is integral to violence itself. We are called upon, however, not only to speak, but to listen. Respectful listening indeed may be a prerequisite to attempting to frame words and actions of intervention and resistance. We are called upon to speak, but we are hard pressed to summon public language that does justice to private pain and anguish.
Robert Cover, in his …
Words And The Door To The Land Of Change: Law, Language, And Family Violence, Martha Minow
Words And The Door To The Land Of Change: Law, Language, And Family Violence, Martha Minow
Vanderbilt Law Review
Can words stem violence? More specifically, can anything anyone says halt the physical devastation inflicted daily behind the closed doors of family dwellings? Some people strike, beat, or burn their children. Some people assault their lovers, some their spouses; usually, men batter women.' Can words, uttered by anyone else, stop this violence?
Words of journalists expose family violence to public view. Words of legislatures and judges forbid and punish family abuse. Words of historians, novelists, television scriptwriters, social workers, feminist theorists, and songwriters depict and decry domestic violence against a backdrop of societal silence about it. But are there words …