Invasion as Trespassing Spatial Boundaries

Abstract

The surge in domestic violence (DV), akin to a lurking shadow, coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This ‘shadow pandemic’ prompts me to explore the intricate interplay of spatial dynamics between DV and the COVID-19 containment measures. Mirroring the spatial patterns seen in DV, the pandemic restrictions too encompass physical and social isolation in cramped living spaces, as well as exclusion from the public sphere. In this contribution, through my engagement with the Foucauldian concept of the ‘political dream’ in a plague-stricken town, I put forth an account of ‘invasion’ as an audacious act of trespassing boundaries, particularly the transgression of citizens’ privacy during lockdowns. This concept of invasion, I argue, entwined with and starkly juxtaposed against the passive ‘non-invasion’ of DV victims in the guise of marital privacy rhetoric, leaves DV victims in a significantly more precarious position in the global epidemic. Unsettling the rigidity of the private/public; personal/political boundaries, Chinese feminists launched ‘Anti-Domestic Violence, Little Vaccine’ campaign during the Wuhan lockdown. It is in my examination of their performative intervention that I propose my second account of ‘invasion’ – invasion as trespassing a prior boundaries. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s feminist critique of the Habermasian public sphere theory, I delineate that the AVLV campaign is an act of invasion performed on the edges of the fixed spatial, political and legal boundaries, thereby blurring these pre-established lines.

Notes

1 For the press release of the UN Woman’s Shadow Pandemic public awareness campaign, see UN Women (2020).

2 For the news report on DV cases in China during the COVID-19 pandemic, see Southern Weekly (2020).

3 Rural Women Development Foundation Guangdong (guangdongsheng lvya funv fazhan jijinhui) is a private development foundation established in 2013 and dedicated to the development of rural women and children in China.

4 For details of Feng Yuan’s ADV endeavour, see China Development Brief interview (2020).

5 Hashtag #Anti-Domestic Violence, Little Vaccine (fanjiabao, xiaoyimiao) with about 800,000 views and 704 discussions https://shorturl.at/agCHT, Hashtag #Anti-domestic Violence during Covid-19 (yiqing fanjiabao) with almost 40,000,000 views and 20,000 discussions https://shorturl.at/amBN9, accessed 21 September 2023.

6 For the Weibo post of #AVLV campaign and the open letter, see Rural Women Development Foundation Guangdong’s Open Call (2020).

7 For details of the AVLV participation and the footage of participants’ practices in their own neighbourhoods, see a video created by AVLV activists (2020).