SaGR Seminar - Justice Across Borders

You are invited to attend the SaGR Seminar - Justice Across Borders: Debates on Punishment and Criminalization of Femi(ni)cide, Presented by Aleida Luján-Pinelo.

• Date: 25th June 25
• Time: 2pm to 5pm (includes light refreshments)
• Location: Parramatta City Campus (1PSQ) - Level 9, Conference Room 4

Summary:

Femi(ni)cide is generally understood as “the killing of women by men because they are women,” it occurs within the patriarchal apparatus or power hierarchies of sex/gender. In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), femi(ni)cide has been discussed since the late 1990s and specific laws have been introduced to combat such crimes. As of today, seventeen countries in LAC have criminalized “femicide” or “feminicide” either by including the category in their penal code or by introducing mainstreaming laws; in any case, criminalization of this crime mostly implies an increase in the years of the sentence. In recent years, femi(ni)cide has started to gain interest in Europe, among the issues to be discussed is whether a law against femi(ni)cide is necessary or not, as in LAC. Opponents of introducing a specific law argue that the LAC case shows that crimes do not decrease by having a law on femi(ni)cide. Although this is true, feminists in LAC are not so naïve as to believe that criminalization of femi(ni)cide alone will solve the problem, this strategy is one of multiple fronts of action.

Legal criminalization of femi(ni)cide can be seen as a victory in which feminist discourse is working “from within” the system and using the tools available to make visible and penalize that system’s assignation of a particular limited value to the lives of women. But, from other critical perspectives such as abolitionism, the prison system will never be the solution to complex social problems since, on the contrary, they reinforce and contribute to the permanence of such power hierarchies (potestas). In my current research I aim to explore socio-legal alternatives of justice in cases of femi(ni)cide through a comparative study of Mexico and Germany, drawing on decolonial theory, new feminist materialism, and affect theory, working with participatory action methods to start conversations in this important field of inquiry and action.

Bio:

Aleida Luján-Pinelo is a Mexican interdisciplinary postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law, University of Turku, where she obtained her PhD in Law. She holds a Master’s degree in the Erasmus Mundus Master’s Program in Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of Granada and the University of Utrecht and completed her Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy at the Metropolitan Autonomous University, Mexico City. She is a co-founder of the independent project Feminizidmap, a database on femi(ni)cides in German territory. Her most recent research focuses on femi(ni)cide in the European context from an interdisciplinary perspective and using the case study of Germany. Her current research projects bring epistemologies of the South and new feminist materialism together to study and create practices that offer solutions to complex social problems of patriarchal violence. Her research interests include feminist (legal) theory, new feminist materialism, epistemologies of the South, critical pedagogy, data feminism, and femi(ni)cide. Her research outputs have been published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Law and Literature, Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence, and eTropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics.

Please Register: https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/western/sagr-seminar-justice-across-borders-debates-on-punishment-and-criminalization-of-femi-ni-cide-presented-by-aleida-lujan-pinelo