ABSTRACT
This chapter critically reflects on the notion of ‘risk’ in relation to the scholarship on gendered violence in South Africa. It reviews empirical research on intimate partner violence (IPV), sexual violence and other forms of gendered violence to show how the knowledge produced works to construct particular women as being ‘at greater risk’ of violence and particular men as being at greater risk of perpetration. The effects of the discursive resources utilised in academic discourse on gendered violence in South Africa are illuminated to demonstrate how they perpetuate particular racialised, classed and gendered stereotypes. The chapter also engages with the implications of these stigmatising discourses by illustrating how they operate in media narratives on gender-based violence more broadly. Overall, the chapter argues that these discursive resources limit the possibilities for new ways of theorising men’s violence toward women that might incorporate social-historical analyses and give due recognition to the complexities of individual lives, subjectivities and materialities.
