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In Legacies of War Kimberly Theidon examines the lives of children born of wartime rape and the experiences of their mothers and communities to offer a gendered theory of harm and repair. Drawing on ethnographic research in postconflict Peru and Colombia, Theidon considers the multiple environments in which conception, pregnancy, and childbirth unfold. She reimagines harm by taking into account the impact of violence on individual people as well as on more-than-human lives, bodies, and ecologies, showing how wartime violence reveals the interdependency of all life. She also critiques policy makers, governments, and humanitarian organizations for their efforts at postconflict justice, which frequently take an anthropocentric rights-based approach that is steeped in liberal legalism. Rethinking the intergenerational reach of war while questioning what counts as sexual and reproductive violence, Theidon calls for an explicitly feminist peace-building and postconflict agenda that includes a full range of sexual and reproductive rights, including access to safe and affordable abortions.
List of contents
Gratitude vii
Introduction 1
1. Beyond Stigma 9
2. Situated Biologies 37
3. Ecologies and Aftermaths 57
4. The Long Way Around 85
Final Reflections 93
Notes 97
Bibliography 107
Index 115
About the author
Kimberly Theidon is Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies at Tufts University and author of
Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru.
