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AG Power and Violence

This working group is dedicated to the interdisciplinary analysis of written, visualized, perceived, legitimized, and propagated experiences of power and violence.

Power and violence pervade all epochs and societies. These phenomena are closely associated with each other, but of course each appears in different forms: Power can legitimize violence – when soldiers go to war for their leaders, or when leaders forcibly re-take the land of rebellious vassels; violence can serve the accumulation of power – when people are repressed, riches seized by force, or when groups act together in violence; violence can also shake up the powers-that-be, when revolutionaries attack the prevailing order, or when soldiers mutiny against authority figures; power can stem violence – it can be committed to the stabilization of a society in the face of violent assaults. Violence destroys, power influences – these are intense experiences to process; to a great extent, they inform social identities. How are such experiences written about, visualized, perceived, legitimized, and propagated? This working group is dedicated to the interdisciplinary analysis of this topic matrix.

 

Central, framing concepts and hypotheses

1. Behavioural manifestations and discourses of legitimization

  • Constituitive and destructive effects of power
  • Ritually connotated violence as a channel of communication

2. The use of violence and power made visible

  • Concrete instances of 'demonstrations of power' that entail violent behaviour
  • Resistance and counter-violence

3. Power structures and individuals

  • Violence as a 'legitimate' if also 'deviant' behavioural choice in opposition to power structures

 

Contact

 

Meeting times:

The next meeting will be announced here

 

Members

  • Patricia Bobak M.A.
  • Mathis Prange M.A.
  • Dagmar Schmidt
  • Daria Starczenko M.A.
  • Fabian Stein M.A.
  • Stefan Xenakis M.A.

 

Associated members

  • Michael Weise
  • Patricia Lanois