Contesting the Utopia: Power and Resistance in Abusive Lesbian Relationships

This dissertation responds to these concerns by investigating the dissonance between the lived experience of lesbian battering and the dominant domestic violence discourses. The work's title describes the underlying power of utopic understandings of lesbian relationships as articulated by the vestiges of lesbian-feminist philosophy that permeate the multiple sites of power relations in domestic violence contexts. Each chapter addresses these contexts as sites of negotiation for battered lesbians whose narratives of abuse indicate vast injustices from traditional support systems and their own communities. Throughout the dissertation, I argue that battered lesbians traverse complex networks of power relations, which they also resist in individually private as well as expressly public ways.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Speech Communication

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Giorgio, Grace Ann

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kal Alston

• Sociology, Criminology and Penology

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3023063

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/87500