The Grip of Sexual Violence in Conflict

The Grip of Sexual Violence is required reading for understanding how some powerful feminist approaches to international criminal law have produced more problems than solutions. Engle's brilliant and nuanced critique asks us to urgently reconsider the colonial, racial, and cultural assumptions and erasures of such feminism and offers a different path for feminist legal internationalism. -- Inderpal Grewal Karen Engle has long been a perceptive critic of the ways in which feminists call on international institutions to support feminist causes. Here, she offers a remarkable case study of how ideas and concepts travel and transform, making a powerful argument for a more nuanced account of gender, sex and conflict, which takes the complexity of human experience into account. -- Hilary Charlesworth Karen Engle provides a masterful critical account of the politics of 'common sense' that informs feminist interventions in international law. Her incisive analysis of how the discourse on sexual violence in conflict has come to be based on negative images of sex and sexuality and troubling assumptions about gender, war, and peace marks an invaluable and timely contribution to the field. -- Ratna Kapur, Queen Mary University of London Engle's brilliant book shows how concern with sexual violence displaced and undermined feminist movements for geopolitical peace and equality, risking a regulatory vision for female bodies instead of a 'sex positive' one. Engle reopens fateful choices and closes with an inspiring vision of a different feminism and a different international law. -- Samuel Moyn