On Rhetoric and Intimate Partner Violence

From Kathryn M. Olson, "An Epideictic Dimension of Symbolic Violence in Disney's Beauty and the Beast: Inter-Generational Lessons in Romanticizing and Tolerating Intimate Partner Violence" QJS, Volume 99, Issue 4, 2013 

 

I use the term “violence” to denote using words or actions to negate another's value or being. It includes blows, verbal put-downs, and insults about the self. “Symbolic violence” includes representations of violence as well as threats short of blows, physical destruction of objects proximate to or cherished by the other, and containing the other through intimidation or implication that force will be used unless there is compliance. Under this view, rhetoric can constitute violence, but it is neither inherently violent nor the violation of another, as some have argued. Wayne Brockriede, Henry H. Johnstone, Jr., and Maurice Natanson develop process-based rhetorical ethics showing how people may argue or persuade without violating the other's value, being, or ability to respond rhetorically. Wayne C. Booth demonstrates how a similar ethical approach to persuasion can enhance effectiveness, rejecting the notion that ethical rhetoric is, by its nature, ineffective. Surveys show that almost half of US adults have experienced psychological aggression from a romantic partner and a third physical violence. Yet seven in ten adults—the same number who claim they would intervene if they recognized partner violence in progress—say it is difficult to tell whether a witnessed instance (including slapping, hitting, threats, verbal abuse) constitutes or warns of romantic violence. Repeated instances, even when varied, can constitute a pattern—one that presents a stronger argument for the presence of intimate partner violence...

Positioned in popular entertainment, violence often performs a socially conservative function by reiterating established power and positional relationships: “As action, violence hurts, kills, and scares. The last is its most important social function because that is what maintains power and compels acquiescence to power. Therefore, it is important who scares whom and who is ‘trained’ to be the victim.” To preserve a social order, both “violent” and “victim” (and, I would add, tolerant, non-intervening bystander) roles must be learned; violence is “a dramatic demonstration of power which communicates much about social norms and relationships, about goals and means, about winners and losers, about the risks of life, and about the price for transgressions of society's rules.” Mediated violence thus teaches the uninitiated and reminds more experienced members whose privileges and position the community will likely back in real-life confrontations. The issue is not copy-cat violence, but reinforcing dominant power positions and acquiescing to their privileges. The [media]'s explanation and resolution may normalize concrete signs of intimate partner violence for viewers in ways that make them unremarkable, even romantic.