Introduction

This chapter introduces the reader to salient theories of violence and gender in humanistic disciplines (e.g., works of Gayle Rubin, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, and Slavoj Žižek). In this way, readers not acquainted with these ideas will be provided with an overview accompanied by some examples demonstrating the perspectives and challenges of each summarized approach to the topic. Two key ideas will be followed throughout the book, namely the idea that gender is a system (sensu Rubin) and therefore a form of symbolic violence (sensu Bourdieu and Žižek) and that it can function as a frame of war (sensu Butler). Although these authors wrote about violence in contexts far removed from ancient Egypt, the theoretical potential of their ideas goes beyond these contexts. Examples from archaeological research on gender and violence are also discussed, and function as a history of research on gender and violence in archaeology.