Féminisme et universalisme du Conseil de l’Europe : le cas de la dénomination "violence domestique à l’égard des femmes"

This article adopts a discourse analysis approach to show the pluralistic discursive identity of the Council of Europe as it springs from the name violence domestique à l’égard des femmes officially used in the French versions of the documents of the 2006-2008 "Campagne pour combattre la violence à l’égard des femmes, y compris la violence domestique". The name can be analyzed as a preconstruction resulting from the transformation of 1) personal stories told in the first person singular by victims and of 2) collective protests told by women in the first person plural signaling thereby their belonging to a social category defined by a common oppression by men. Abstract names are a way to erase any trace of subjectivity from the discourse and are therefore typical of international organizations such as the Council of Europe. However, a discourse analysis can make the past reemerge from the present and a subjective, militant enunciation resurface from a consensual abstract discourse. Therefore, although the Council of Europe adopts discursive strategies which neutralize subjectivity as well as conflicts between man and woman, it places itself within a discursive field that still bares the memory of those who first spoke out against domestic violence as a result of male domination over women. The Council of Europe’s discursive identity is therefore pluralistic as, no matter its will, it is both universalistic and feminist.