“I’ll give you what I have if you have the stomach to read it”: reflections about continuities and disputes between reports and records in a case of domestic violence

Abstract

In this manuscript, I undertake to carry out an ethnographic analysis of a case of domestic violence, combining the interlocutor’s report with a careful observation of the documents produced at the Women’s Police Station, Instituto Médico Legal (Legal Medical Institute) and by the Judiciary in the lower courts –in other words, a certain reading by the state about the facts experienced. Protecting the peculiarities of an ethnographic report and a documentary ethnography, I present two versions of the same event: the victim’s and the ones contained in these documents. I propose that both versions be taken sometimes as complementary, sometimes as permeated by tensions. As result, I present the possibility of understanding that state documents, always mediated by the agents who produce them, are imbued with the power to produce truths, which, in turn, operate in the daily lives of people involved in cases of domestic violence, especially the victims.