Entanglements, Articulation, and the New Structure of Domestic Violence Survivorhood.

The relationship between feminism and biomedicine is complex and uneven. Medical sociologists and feminist scholars often theorize this relationship as one of co-optation. Biomedicine may appropriate feminist empowerment language for marketing and profit. Or, feminists may agitate for biomedical inclusion, only to have 'their' problem redefined. And yet, co-optation frameworks suggest that the relationship between biomedicine and feminism is - in the end - reducible to biomedicine, that biomedical power is the mover and the outcome in that relationship. Starting the analysis with feminist-based institutions rather than biomedical ones, this paper uses the case of domestic violence to complicate such 'takeover' explanations. Specifically, this paper tracks the rise of trauma discourse in the domestic violence field, asking why feminist actors - who have long rejected psychiatric knowledge and therapeutic practice in domestic violence work - now turn to 'trauma' as a vanguard paradigm of the field. Based on interviews and archival data, findings suggest that 'trauma' sutures together feminist and mental health frameworks, centering victims' psychology and bodily 'dysregulation' in domestic violence services, yet rejecting the diagnostic work of the mental health field. Pushing past notions of biomedical takeover, co-optation, or de-politicization, this paper draws from the concept of 'articulation' to demonstrate how the tensions between biomedicine and feminism are kept in play - rather than subsumed into each other - in order to produce the new reality of domestic violence trauma. Domestic violence is being biomedicalized, but feminist histories animate that process, transforming the implementation of biomedical logics and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]