IPP Workshop Series: Critical Approaches to Representations of (Non)Violence (Juan Brigard)

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How to define “violence” and distinguish it from semantically neighbouring terms such as “harm”, “coercion”, “aggression”, “domination”, “force” or “power”? Which critical risks or potentials accounts do exist extending this notion to epistemes, ecosystems or political structures? How can we understand different approaches to nonviolence, as a way to channel the destructive potential immanent in social relations? How can we describe (non)violence in different cultural and narrative artefacts, such as videos, images or texts?

The workshop will present, on the one hand, micro or “narrow”, mid and “broad” definitions of violence as presented by contemporary political philosophers such as Koloma Beck/Schlichte (2014) and Müller-Salo (2018). On the other, in the case of nonviolence, it will expose classical definitions of nonviolence from social resistance studies, like “principled” and “holistic”, in contrast to “pragmatic” or “technical” definitions, as characterized by scholars such as Schock (2003, 2013) and Martin (2015).

As specific case studies, the workshop will offer scenes from S. Bier’s film The Revenge (2010) and reading and discussing two short stories, H. Téllez’ “Just Lather, That’s All” (1950) and G. García Márquez’ “One of these Days” (1962). Please, read the short stories before the workshop [(each story is only two pages long)].

// Juan Brigard (GCSC) 

Note: The sessions of the IPP Workshop Series are open for BA, MA and PhD students and the participants do not require any previous knowledge to take part.

The IPP Workshop Series "Reading Culture: Established and Emerging Approaches" provides the space for IPP members to give a workshop that deals with current concepts and methods of literary and cultural theory related to their research interests. It aims at creating an interactive discussion for doctoral researchers as well as undergraduate students. The topics may range from general introductions to different "schools" of literary and cultural theory to concepts, methods and subjects of literary and cultural theory.