The (Heterosexual) Regendering of a Modern State: Criminalizing and Implementing Domestic Violence Law in Trinidad
Mindie Lazarus-Black,
Mindie Lazarus-Black
Mindie Lazarus-Black is associate professor of criminal justice, University of Illinois at Chicago, and affiliate faculty, anthropology.
Search for more papers by this authorMindie Lazarus-Black,
Mindie Lazarus-Black
Mindie Lazarus-Black is associate professor of criminal justice, University of Illinois at Chicago, and affiliate faculty, anthropology.
Search for more papers by this authorMy list of acknowledgments is a long one. In summer 1995, a grant from the Office of Social Science Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) enabled me to become a visiting scholar at the Centre for Gender and Development at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. That summer and through the period of my fieldwork I benefited from conversations with Bridget Brereton, Ramesh Deosaran, Kusha Haraksingh, and Rhoda Reddock. I thank Raquel Sukhu for helping me collect court data. At the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA), I was assisted by Cathy Shepherd. June Renie was especially helpful to me at the Hugh Wooding Law Library.
Abstract
This paper investigates one example of a process with global implications that I describe as the “regendering” of the state. Regendering refers to the process of bringing to public and legal attention categories and activities that were formerly without name but that constituted harm to women, denied them rights, silenced them, or limited their capacity to engage in actions available to men. I examine the regendering of the Trinidadian state by focusing on one of its most salient examples, the Domestic Violence Act. I identify first the coalition of forces and events that brought the subject of violence against women to lawmakers' attention and made possible the first Domestic Violence Act in the English-speaking Caribbean. I then investigate the interplay between the global discourse about domestic violence law-the passage of which has become an important symbol of the “modern” state-and local concerns about justice, gender, and family. Finally, I consider problems in the implementation of domestic violence law.
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