Vulnerability in Narratives of Women Imprisoned for Violent Crimes

Satu Venäläinen RESEARCH REPORT: VULNERABILITY IN NArrATIVES OF WOMEN IMPRISONED FOR VIOLENT CrIMES abstract This paper focuses on ways in which vulnerability is given meaning and related to in narratives of women serving a prison sentence for violent crimes. These women can be seen as inhabiting specifically vulnerable social positions in many respects, while at the same time their vulnerability is often denied. In my analysis I view the past, present, and future vulnerabilities of these women in a dialectical relation with the narratives they tell and the identities they enact through these tellings. In their narratives, vulnerability entwines with agentic orientations towards violence in complex ways. While often figuring as part of the context of doing violence, vulnerability is also refuted, combated, and distanced from the selves constituted in the narratives. In my reading, these ambivalent relations to vulnerability reflect the gendered trouble it poses for being seen as a worthy subject in the context of Western valorization of autonomy and individual agency. Keywords: vulnerability, violence, women, affects, discourse n this paper I explore meanings attached women’s acts of narrating their violence as social to vulnerability in the narratives of women action that draws on socio-culturally circulating Iwho are serving prison sentences for violent meanings and evaluations—concerning, for crimes in Finland. Based on my PhD study instance, vulnerability—as well as personal, (Venäläinen 2017c) that focused on women as affective histories of social encounters in perpetrators of violence I discuss ways in which multiple, locally variant ways. imprisoned women acknowledge, negotiate, My analysis of meanings attached to and disclaim their multiply vulnerable social vulnerability in the imprisoned women’s positions. I approach this meaning-making narratives is largely based on an understanding around vulnerability in imprisoned women’s of vulnerability put forth by Judith Butler (e.g. narratives as a central part of discursive 2004). Accordingly, the analysis relies on a and affective processes through which their definition of vulnerability as a human condition identities are constituted in relation to violence. that touches upon all of our lives and is based Adopting this approach means that I view these on our embodied relationality that inherently suomen antropologi | volume 43 issue 3 autumn 2018 102 Satu Venäläinen attaches people to each other (see also Bottner WOMANHOOD, VIOLENCE, in this special issue). This understanding of AND VULNERABILITY vulnerability based on universality is, however, also complemented, and complicated, in Women imprisoned for violent crimes can be Butler’s conceptualization by the observation seen as inhabiting specifically vulnerable social that vulnerability is lived differently by people positions in many respects, while at the same inhabiting different social locations. (e.g. Butler time their vulnerability is often denied. Due to 2004: 32.) Importantly, these social locations prevalent, socio-culturally circulating gendered also affect the possibilities to recognize understandings, women who have committed vulnerability in the lives of people belonging violent crimes are often cast as ‘the other’ in to different social groups. Alongside these relation to properly feminine, ‘normal’ women views, in my analysis I have also drawn upon in cultural imaginary, and thus excluded from Margrit Shildrick’s (2002) related description the realm of normalcy. Being seen as ‘doubly of vulnerability as the othered opposite to deviant’ (Naylor 1990) in this manner may individuality and autonomy that are widely lead to them being subjected to heightened valorized in Western thought. Together, these moral condemnation and social exclusion at theoretical insights allow for grasping some the level of social practices. This is evident, for of the central ambivalences in ways in which example, in many of the attempts to make women are positioned in relation to vulnerability sense of women’s violence in the media and on one hand and violence on the other. Hence, in courts. Portrayals of women suspected of I argue that these conceptualizations of violent crimes have been noted to frequently vulnerability provide a fruitful interpretative rely on reductionist categorizations based on tool for exploring meaning-making through labeling them either as insane, inhumanly evil, which the identities of imprisoned women are or as victims without agency (e.g. Blackman and constituted. Walkerdine 2001; Easteal et al. 2015; Gilbert In the sections below I will first describe 2002). What makes these modes of sense- some of the particularities in the social making particularly problematic is the way they positionings of women imprisoned for violent work in placing women who have committed crimes. In particular, I discuss how culturally violent crimes outside the normative frames of available understandings about gender and womanhood and even humanity in the eyes of violence tend to get inscribed into ways of others (Morrissey 2003). making sense of women as perpetrators of Meanings attached to women and violence violence, and describe the circumstances that however also vary depending on the societal, commonly inform imprisoned women’s lives. historical, and cultural context. In the Finnish I then move onto describing my analytical context, and particularly in the tabloid press approach in more detail, and from there to (see e.g. Venäläinen 2016), making sense of the recurrent tendencies in the ways in which ‘violent women’ seems often entwined with the imprisoned women who participated in the minimization of gendered vulnerabilities my study position themselves in relation to of Finnish women. In the tabloid narratives vulnerability in their narratives. that I have analysed this coalesces with laying emphasis on women’s individual agency in the depictions of their actions. Such descriptions suomen antropologi | volume 43 issue 3 autumn 2018 103 Satu Venäläinen shape the portrayals of women suspected of relationships. In addition, imprisoned women violent crimes by tying violence to their character often have histories of substance abuse and other and to what appear as their inner individualized physical as well as mental health problems. It has pursuits and will. This works to construct also been noted that during their imprisonment their identities as essentially and permanently women tend to inhabit marginalized positions violent. Simultaneously, possibilities for viewing due to a lack of gender-sensitive awareness and violence committed by women in the light of practices among the professionals they come social, gendered relations imbued with power in contact with. (Jokinen 2011; Lattu 2016.) are generally foreclosed. Thus the imprisoned women’s marginalization These tendencies to individualize women’s tends to take various forms and often extends violence can be seen as relying on similar across their lifespan. Furthermore, the assumptions as the often cited myth of the incarceration of women who have committed ‘strong Finnish woman’—particularly potent in violent crimes tends to significantly deepen the context of making sense of intimate partner their marginalization and limit their future violence and power dynamics in the domestic possibilities, making it even more difficult for sphere (Lahti 2001)—and the related notions them to find stability and security in their lives about gender equality as having been widely (Wesely 2006). achieved in Finnish society. Such notions allow for seeing Finnish women as strong NArrATING VULNERABLE actors while diverting attention from the still 1 LIVES: NOTES ON THE existing gendered inequalities. In other words, THEORETICAL AND these notions may hinder acknowledging the METHODOLOGICAL vulnerabilities of women suspected of violent APPROACH crimes. Minna Ruuskanen’s study (2001), for instance, has shown how such notions may be The context of criminalization and imprison- influential in efforts in legal settings to make ment is highly significant in relation to the sense of women’s lethal violence against male narratives the women tell and the selves they intimate partners who have abused them. Based enact through the narratives. While prison on Ruuskanen’s study it appears that in Finnish contexts and the experiences they allow for may courts violent actions of abused women are vary considerably, one of the ways in which they seldom considered in the light of the effects are impactful is how they influence the research of their victimization but rather emphasis is encounters between participants and researchers, laid on their own failure to get help or to leave and the positionings enacted in those encounters. abusive relationships. Lois Presser (2005) has claimed that the The specific life-circumstances of women imprisonment easily marks research participants who are convicted of violent or other crimes in as deviant ‘others’ in their interactions with Finland and elsewhere are frequently imbued researchers, and thus casts them into a position with heightened insecurity and lack of privilege, from where they are expected to give an account and are hence characterizable as involving of their deviant doings.2 However, narrating the multiple marginalization (Granfelt 2007). experiences that have brought one to prison Violent abuse has often been a prevalent part may also provide opportunities to counter, or to of their lives and the majority of their social negotiate with, the

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