The Belly's Word

Domestic Violence in a Bengali Clinic

Bibliographic Data

ID2289150
AuthorsAmrapali Maitra (0000-0001-9781-2440, Harvard Medical School, 25 Shattuck St Boston Massachusetts 02115 United States of America, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume37
Issue2
Pages134-147
Publication date2023-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedical Anthropology Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0745-5194 • E-ISSN: 1548-1387
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/maq.12759
PMID36989382
OpenAlexW4361285848
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited50

Unspeakability is a dominant analytic lens in scholarship on gendered violence in India, but women can and do speak out. This article examines how Bengali women complain about domestic violence throughpeter katha, the belly's word. The capaciouspet(belly) is the seat of tension, where abuse dwells in the body. At a clinic in Kolkata, India, women describe sensations of abdominal pain, pressure, and hunger to convey patterns and temporalities of violence. Yet complaints of belly pain go unacknowledged by local clinicians. Hygiene discourses frame poor women's bodies, not structural violence, as the problem.Peter kathais more than an idiom of distress: it is a genre of embodied complaint that illuminates violence as the accrual of harm and, in its dynamic and layered quality, moves beyond a binary of disclosure or concealment. Anthropologists may usepeter kathato extend the conceptual vocabulary of gender and silence. [domestic violence, kinship, complaint, hygiene, belly, India

Aesthetics · Bengali · Complaint · Criminology · Domestic violence · Linguistics · Poison control · Political science · Sexual violence · Silence · Sociology · Structural violence · Suicide prevention · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Intimate Partner and Family Violence · Law · Medicine · Psychology · Sex work and related issues

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