Vulnerable bodies: violence, recognition, and the historical production of female normality

Abstract

This article analyzes the historical and institutional processes involved in
the production of female vulnerability, discussing how practices of care, violence,
medicalization, and recognition contribute to the constitution of certain bodies as
legitimate, deviant, or socially precarious. The study seeks to understand how modern
institutions organize unequal forms of social intelligibility, belonging, and access to
public protection, articulating contributions from History, Sociology, and critical
Collective Health. This is a theoretical-essay study with a qualitative approach, based on
a critical bibliographic review of references related to biopolitics, symbolic violence,
feminist studies, medicalization, and disability studies. The analysis mobilizes authors
such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Pierre Bourdieu, Didier Fassin, Margareth Rago,
Mary Del Priore, and Debora Diniz to discuss how mechanisms of discipline,
administrative management of life, and bodily normalization participate in the historical
production of female precarization. The results indicate that contemporary institutions
not only manage pre-existing experiences of suffering and vulnerability, but also
produce the very categories of legitimacy and recognition that they later regulate
through mechanisms of care, surveillance, and social classification. The article
concludes that violence against women cannot be understood exclusively as an
interpersonal event, but rather as an expression of historical structures responsible for
organizing unequal forms of existence, protection, and social legitimacy.