International Seminar
Representing Violence

September 19, 2008, 9:00, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra, Amphitheatre IV (5th Floor)

Notice

The Seminar shall be held at the School of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra, Amphitheatre IV (5th Floor). The participants reception shall take place at 9h00. The Seminar’s Programme is maintained as previously announced.

Presentation

The omnipresence of violence in contemporary discourse cannot hide the fact that the concept itself has so far been insufficiently theorised. It must, therefore, be subjected to a specific questioning, taking  into account, in particular,  its transversal significance, i.e. the ways in which the question of violence in itself destabilizes what seemed to be solid disciplinary certainties.

If to speak about violence amounts to naming the unnameable, it is not surprising that the question presents itself in a particularly dense and complex way in aesthetic reflection. Ever since the moment in which violence became a decisive aesthetic instrument in the arsenal of modernity, it became evident that the question about the modes of representation of violence had to be complemented by the question about how violence affects the order of representation itself. As a consequence, it also became necessary to inquire about the ways in which the new languages and discursive protocols in their turn influence practices, notably through the legitimation effects they inevitably produce.

The seminar is designed to mark the conclusion of a research project, entitled “The representation of Violence and the Violence of Representation,” carried out at the Centre for Social Studies. The researchers involved in the project will present some of their results, in dialogue with scholars that have been analysing the question of violence from other perspectives, with the aim of finding a common ground of reflection that may provide the basis for future questionings.

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