ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on the work of Judith Butler to introduce the panopticon effect, and how the concept can be used to gain a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between gender and coercive control within domestic violence. Influenced by Foucault, it begins from the premise that violence is a discursive project which produces and reinscribes theories and politics that conceal relations of power and domination enacted out against already precarious bodies and lives. Through a reading of Butler’s critical social theory on gender performativity, the heterosexual matrix and normative violence, the chapter applies the panopticon effect to the contemporary themes of stalking and custody stalking. Drawing on victim accounts, it reveals how gender norms reinforce masculine violence expressed through instruments of discipline, surveillance and self-surveillance with the effect of trapping women within an invisible prison. Through a rethinking of gender and the protected status of violence, this chapter provides social work students and practitioners with tools for understanding the invisibility of masculinity and heterosexuality as normative categories that serve to perpetuate violence norms. The panopticon effect contributes to social work theory, teaching and practice with the aim of facilitating the emancipatory transformation of individuals and societies.
