Re-imagining an end to gendered violence : prefiguring the worlds we want

Abstract

In this chapter I will explore both the potential and challenges faced in doing accountability work on gendered violence within what has been termed the ‘British Left’. I draw on empirical research with women and non-binary survivors who have experienced violence (such as domestic and sexual violence) from fellow activists within grassroots social movements. Accountability work is attempted within a punitive state, which circulates dominant ideas of thinking about and responding to violence as a problem of ‘bad’ individuals. Traces of this ‘criminal legal imagination’ can recirculate within British Left grassroots social movements faced with gendered violence within their groups. However, learning from the perspectives of survivors and experienced transformative justice practitioners and facilitators can help to map out a framework for transformative justice within the British Left. This open acknowledgement of how wider conditions can limit accountability work aims to open up pathways towards cultivating accountability as a crucial practice in dismantling the punitive state. This includes the development of an anti-carceral feminist imagination to contest the reliance on punitive state responses, such as the law, police, courts and prison, to resolve gendered violence.