Visible Wars & Invisible Girls, Shadow Industries, and the Politics of Not-Knowing

Abstract

Girls constitute invisible casualties of war. This is an invisibility that is actively constructed by those who enact this violence, or who benefit from it in some way; it is an invisibility that takes on cultural dynamics when a dearth of statistics, accounts, and accountability perpetuate a tradition of "not-seeing" these forms of violence in the world. If silence is political, "not-knowing" is at the core of power and its abuses. In-depth ethnographic explorations of girl's lives on the frontlines demonstrate that they constitute a considerable percentage of war's victims. But this article shows the violence they face is far greater than traditional definitions of war indicate. Girls are at risk of being raped, maimed and killed in torture and battles. But as well, they are often subjected to violence within their own communities. Some of this violence is organized: international profiteering, for example, reaps billions of dollars of profits by forcing girls in warzones into illegal labor and sex industries. These analyses raise the question of the very definitions and distinctions between war and peace, of the power and profit that adheres to both, and to the very constructions of invisibility that render violence and global profiteering possible.

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