The Everyday and the Exceptional
This chapter makes a case for reconceptualizing human rights “from below” by grounding human rights discourses in women’s particularities and their voices rather than prescriptive policy standards. It does so by bringing together feminist perspectives grounded in decoloniality and liberation psychology. It presents findings from activist scholarship in Northeast India to offer a critical feminist analysis of civil society’s (non)response to gender-based violence and counternarratives of Garo women protagonists who explain these (non)responses. Following Garo women protagonists in their understanding of violence illuminates the fundamental heterogeneity of violence against women as well as underlying cultural institutional and structural processes. By moving between situated narrative and wider analysis, this chapter explicates the connections between “exceptional” violence and pervasive violations of women’s human rights. The research, action, and policy implications for feminist psychologists engaged in human rights scholarship are discussed.