Description
This article examines the specific, gendered discourses which can be uncovered within political apologies for conflict-related sexual violence. Whilst apologies are often perceived as either cynical, ‘empty’ gestures which seek to carry out governmental interests or as attempts by political actors to (albeit, often inadequately) emphasise their commitment to addressing violence and associated cultures of impunity, a Feminist analysis of two cases of apology for conflict-related sexual violence (the Japanese imperial ‘comfort women’ and the USA’s infamous Abu Ghraib torture scandal) elicits that such apologies articulate in unique ways the continuing ambivalence of sexual violence in global politics as well as state responsibility for this violence. In centring apologies as rich affective-discursive, deliberately emotional sites at which CRSV is explained and/or accounted for by the state, I show how this violence is framed as both normalised and abhorrent.
