Repudiation implies a rejection.
Repudiation is the action and effect of repudiating . This concept, which comes from the Latin word repudium , indicates the rejection of something or its non-acceptance .
For example: “Strong repudiation of the words of the British president” , “The club leaders called for an act of repudiation of the acts of violence” , “The president was surprised by the people's repudiation” .
Acts of repudiation
Rejection can be expressed in various ways. A spontaneous act of repudiation can be a boo, a whistle or a chorus of insults at an action on a playing field or at a public speech. If a soccer player hits an opponent without the ball, it is likely that he will be condemned by the public, or at least by the supporters of the team in which the attacked athlete plays.
Other acts of repudiation are premeditated and require a certain organization . When the United States attacked Iraq , several left-wing political parties called for marches of repudiation in front of the North American embassies. In this way, they started a campaign to invite protesters to the protest and then developed certain actions within the framework of the event (speeches, concerts, etc.).
The repudiation can also be documented and made known through a publication or a letter . Faced with anti-Semitic statements by an actor, a non-governmental organization may decide to write a petition expressing its repudiation of the statements and asking the artist to be punished for his discriminatory comments. This request is sent to the media and published on the NGO 's website .
An act of repudiation can be spontaneous or organized.
History of the concept
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the Latin origin of the word repudiation is repudium , whose meaning indicates rejection or an act of rejection towards something that produces shame . In turn, this term has its root in the verb Pudet , which means to cause shame; By prefixing it with the prefix re- , its definition acquires a backward movement, a retreat to the moment in which such sensation did not exist.
In Ancient Rome and Greece , to cite two examples, this term represented a right that, to this day, is repudiable in itself: the exclusive power of a man to reject his wife and send her back to his home, based for one of several possible reasons, such as that she could not get pregnant and offer him the offspring he intended, that she did not have the behavior considered respectable in her time, or that a woman from a richer family or with more political weight had "appeared." on stage.
The reputation of the victims of this unjust power was forever stained, especially in the case of Greece, given that the functions reserved for women were those of mother and wife, and this rejection was based on their supposed impossibility to carry them out. . Therefore, they had to spend the rest of their days in their father's house, dedicating themselves to the tasks of a servant and knowing that they would never have the opportunity to marry again, something that in that context was far from being a punishment.
Incredible as it may seem, in certain countries and cultures in which divorce is not a right, the repudiation of women is still valid . Note that in the action of "sending the woman back to her house" you can appreciate the sense of going back in time provided by the prefix re- .
It is curious that such a sexist attitude has been supported by a term that, currently, is one of the tools to fight against sexism . We repudiate what we want to reverse, that we do not want to exist, either because it represents an injustice or because it seems detrimental to the balance of life.