Discourses of Violence - Violence of Discourses

The issues of violence and its control, containment or overcoming range prominently in the social sciences. Empirical sociology seeks to derive generalizable explanations from its research into concrete cases of the occurrence or absence of violent conflict, aspiring to transform such explanations into instructions for strategic action. Within cultural studies, discursive and epistemic formations are assumed to be fundamentally and endemically violent. In these perspectives, the quotidian violence that ineluctably inheres in modern discourses manifests itself as, e.g., normalisation, privilege and exclusion, thus sharing a wide range of common objects and objectives with the social sciences. The essays collected in this volume address contemporary conjunctures and discourses of violence in world society from different disciplines ranging from cultural studies, social science, political science and philosophy to history, literary criticism and psychology.

Autorentext

The Editors: Dirk Wiemann, Agata Stopinska, Anke Bartels and Johannes Angermüller all teach at the University of Magdeburg and are on the board of the transdisciplinary forum Magdeburg which, among other activities, organises the annual transforma conference.

Inhalt

Contents: Johannes Angermüller/Anke Bartels/Agata Stopinska/Dirk Wiemann: Violence of Discourses - Discourses of Violence: An Introduction - Dilek Kantar: Biblical Roots of the Discourse of Mass Destruction: Las Casas' Devastation of the Indies - Dagmar Reichardt: The King Tumbles: Power and Violence in Cultural Conflicts - Maryna Romanets: Transgressive Violence, Mad Intertextuality, and Aesthetics of Convulsion - Arne de Boever: Architectures of Memory in W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz - Claire Potter: In the Looking Glass: The Mythical Foundations of Domestic Violence - L.H.M. Ling: Neoliberal Neocolonialism: Comparing Enron with Asia's «Crony Capitalism» - Soenke Zehle: Media Intervention: Too Late for Rwanda, Still Needed at Home - J. Carter Wood: The Process of Civilization (and its Discontents): Violence, Narrative and History - Holger Rossow: Notes on the Analysis of the Discourse of Globalism - Jens Greve: Understanding the Unity and the Diversity of the World: The Perspectives of World Society Theory and Globalisation Theory - Petra Kuppinger: War and Violence: Small Town Debates and Debaters - Ulf Schulenberg: Theorizing the Dialectic of Race and Class: Cornel West's Prophetic Pragmatism as Radical Cultural Criticism - Katharina Peter: American Psycho: Violence as Abuse of Freedom - Jessica Baños Poo: Uncritical Fundamentalism in Political Philosophy? - Clara Ramírez-Barat: The Role of Forgiveness in Transitions to Democracy.