O patriarcado deslocado: invisibilidade das violências intrafamiliares praticadas por filhos/as contra suas mães

Abstract

Based on the analysis of intrafamily non-conjugal violence, I defend the thesis that there can be a displaced patriarchy in the relationships between mother and child. The displacement operates on three fronts: a) in the conceptual field; b) in the social roles of the subjects of patriarchy and c) in the emergence/visibility of other subjects and other domestic violences. Regarding the first aspect, there is a sophisticated and intense theoretical mobilization on the part of feminists who have undertaken efforts to de-patriarchalize the concept of patriarchy. This movement aggregates categories of analysis and intersected conceptual notions whose intention is to explain the complexity of the real-concrete social fact today, as well as unveiling the new configurations of the patriarchal order still strongly present in Western society. The analysis, therefore, requires new cleavages and ruptures. In what are referred to as the social roles of the subjects of the patriarchy, displacement means problematizing the universal patriarchal subject, crystallized in the image of the heterosexual relationship between the man-father patriarch (the subject who dominates and attacks) versus the woman-mother (the subalternized and passive victim of violence). Finally, the last displacement – and the most important of this research – is related to the need to perceive other subjects and other domestic violences. Here abusive practices break the social contract established in the traditional patriarchal family order and sons or daughters become perpetrators of violence against their mothers, who, in turn, react and manage this condition. For this analysis, I drew from bibliographic and cartographic sources as well as literature reviews. Furthermore, I used the empirical basis in order to demonstrate the theories presented. The analysis was partial, anchored only in the narratives of the women-mothers in situations of non-conjugal family violence. Seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with women from distinct locations of class, race, generation, educational level, current spatial occupation and other structural or circumstantial social markers emerging in the field research, such as geographical origin.