Femicide and the politics of acknowledgement : a feminist analysis of news representations of lethal male violence against women

Abstract

In analyzing four specific cases of femicide covered in Canadian national newspapers through a feminist poststructuralist framework, this thesis demonstrates that femicide cases are regularly explained as isolated acts of violence.

This thesis examines how specific language and discourses chosen by the news media obscure the gendered and sexist meanings of the violence taken out on women's bodies. This project challenges the dominant patriarchal discourses implicit in newspaper coverage and questions how false, problematic, representations of femicides perpetuate ignorance of systemic gender inequalities in our society.

The argument presented throughout the thesis explains that if the media used the gender-specific terminology of "femicide," they would be directing attention to women's inequality in society and the politics underlying women's deaths. Redefining language and recreating language in feminist terms, therefore, is not only a form of resistance to patriarchal power but it also allows for creating and taking part in new political spaces of power.