Chapter Three, “Storying the Victim/Survivor: Identity, Domestic Violence and Discourses of Agency,” combines an argument about indexicality and iconization with an argument about agency. The analysis shows that police hold a particular idea about agency in regard to the law—people do things on purpose, and they have the ability to choose to do or not to do things. This view of agency, what I call sovereign agency, following Foucault, allows the police to arrest, believing that a person knowingly or purposefully broke the law. Translated in the context of victims, however, this view of agency is entirely problematic. Police believe that victims can just leave an abusive relationship at will and that leaving would bring a swift end to the violence. Victim views on and performances of agency are far more practical and contextual. They are making situated decisions about how to survive every day. I position both models of agency in a theory of discursive agency, to show how the police officers’ more institutionally powerful discourse acts on and erases portions of victim identity. Their discourse “iconicizes” () a particular victim and victim agency, thereby erasing aspects of victim/survivor identity that are performed in their narratives about domestic violence.

Chapter Four analyzes police officer identities performed and assumed in both the victim/survivor and police officer interviews. For police, there are a number of identities emergent, constrained, and enabled by the network of social meanings and ideologies circulating in the domestic violence field of indexicality. I focus on analyzing police narratives and emergent identities. Most of the narratives told by police are either about procedure, police, and law, or about domestic violence victims. Their identities, then, largely emerge in relationship to an/other, a victim/survivor, who is storied as uncompliant with police wishes and expectations. This chapter argues that identity is formed and emerges via stories told about prior interactions and others. The identity that emerges is one of frustration and adherence to protocol but also of caring. In some moments of empathy, police demonstrate concern for victim/survivors and a desire for victim/survivors to get and stay safe.