How Abuses Become 'Domestic Violence': The Performativity Path

This article describes and analyzes the process through which domestic violence is performed in the lives of victims. It observes the activities that constitute the process, beginning with the filing of a police report and ending with its presentation as a case of domestic violence in a court of law. The analysis is based on ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews of key agents in the process in Santiago, Chile. A sequence of framing and translation operations taking place in heterogeneous networks was observed which transported the reported facts from the private lives of the victims to the courtroom, thus performing a new reality that is both private and public. Adapted from the source document.