The research served a dual purpose: (i) to explore men’s subjective experiences of their violence toward their intimate partners and, (ii) to examine how men talk about their violence in an attempt to establish credibility in their accounts. The first emphasised the subjective and emotional bases of individual experience and the second contextualised these descriptions within a broader societal framework. Highlighting the shortcomings of a quantitative research paradigm, the research utilised a qualitative framework which privileged first-person descriptions as the primary sources of subjective meaning. Although oriented toward a phenomenological approach, the research drew upon elements of psychoanalysis and discursive psychology. Twelve men were recruited from three organisations in Johannesburg. Via in-depth semi-structured interviews, men’s most vivid incident(s) of violence were explored. Thematic analysis revealed two levels of meaning: men’s descriptions of their violence (narrative content) and, processes by which they talked about their violence (narrative form). On the subjective dimension, seemingly contradictory experiences of violence were evident, clustering around five central themes: (i) violence as ‘being out of control’, (ii) violence as ‘having control’ over another, (iii) the continuum of love and violence, (iv) violence versus emotionality and (v) the violent self as ‘not me’. In feminist-psychoanalytic terms, men’s emotional dependence on their partners was denied or repressed. Violence represented a negation or devaluation of the feminine where male vulnerability and powerlessness, once exposed, became intolerable to bear. The ability to integrate and tolerate contradictory aspects of self (i.e. ‘emotional’ and ‘rational’) was a decisive step towards healing and becoming the ‘changed man’. On the discursive level, through ‘talk’, men negotiated an identity of ‘changed man’ that provided distance from the ‘violent self’. Attention to the narrative as a persuasive tool revealed ways in which the men attempted to establish credibility in their accounts of violence – achieved by socially positioning themselves in relation to their violence, agreeing to talk and employing impression management ‘strategies’, such as dissociations, justifications and confessions. Reconciling the two levels of analyses, the tension between dominant gendered discourses on masculinity that men relied on (i.e. that which fosters masculine ‘toughness’, whilst diminishing ‘weakness’ or emotionality), and the psychological interior of their actual experiences was evident. A ‘multiplicity approach’ that accords significance to both societal constructions of gender and their impact on men’s behaviour, whilst giving expression to the psychological reality of men’s experiences could prove beneficial in fostering change.

The canon of Western art history provides a selection of artists that have supposedly made an 'original' contribution to stylistic innovation within the visual arts. Although a process of selection cannot be avoided, this procedure has resulted in a Eurocentric and patriarchal art canon. For example, the Western art canon consists of certain white male artists who are given exclusive authority and are often referred to as the 'fathers of art'. As the status of a 'father of art' pertains to the highest level of achievement within artistic creativity, I argue that this excellence in creativity is based on a gender specific criteria. This issue refers to the patrilineage within Western art history and how this father-son model, in a general sense, excludes women artists from the canon. Further, the very few women included in the art canon are not given the equivalent status as a 'father of art'. I address this patriarchal bias through focussing on the father/daughter relationship as a way of challenging the patrilineage within Western art history’s patrilineage. Through this process of intervention, I position the daughter an assertive figure who directly confronts the fathers of Western art. Within this confrontation, I emphasise that the daughter has an assertive identity that is also beyond the father. On this premise my paper is based on the argument that the application of a father/daughter model, within a metaphorical and mythological sense, is useful in subverting the father figures within Western art history. That is, I construct myself as the metaphorical and mythological daughter of the Dada artist, Marcel Duchamp and the Fluxus artist, Joseph Beuys. As an assertive daughter, I insert myself into the patriarchal framework surrounding these two canonical figures in order to decentre and subvert their authority and phallocentric art practice. It is important to note that both Duchamp and Beuys are addressed as case studies (not as individual arguments) that illustrate the patriarchal constructs of the art canon. Within this premise, I draw upon the female artists Sherrie Levine and Jana Sterbak who directly subvert Western father figures as examples of assertive daughter identities. Within this exploration of the assertive daughter identity, I discuss feminist psychoanalysis (particularly the 'object relations' theorist Nancy Chodorow and the French feminist, Luce Irigaray) in order to offer metaphorical representations of the assertive daughter. These metaphors also assist in subverting the gender (male) specific criteria for creativity under the 'law of the father'.