In this seminar Debos explains how the gang rape of a high school girl triggered an unprecedented mobilization and became a state affair in Chad. She explores the conflicting registers of discourse and ways of framing rape that were used by male and female activists in Chad and in France. She aims to highlight what was rendered visible and what was excluded and occulted in the prominent discourses. She shows that the public problematization of sexual violence does not automatically imply a questioning of the sexual order. On the contrary, nationalist and patriarchal representations of women’s bodies reinforced a logic of masculinist protection. French neo-orientalist feminists who adopted the stance of the protector in the relation to Chadian women reactivated colonial tropes.

Marielle Debos is Associate Professor in Political Science at the University Paris Nanterre. Her research interests include armed conflicts and violence, law and the state, with a focus on Chad. She is the author of Living by the Gun in Chad: Combatants, Impunity and State Formation (Zed Books, 2016). This is open to the public.

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