In the current economic and political context dominated by states of crisis, of emergency and of exception, violence has become a pervasive phenomenon that has global effects at individual, community and environmental level. It has become part of our daily lives to such an extent, that its subtle mechanisms affecting freedom, personal and collective histories, and our living conditions are ideologically justified. Rationalized violence seems to be the “poisonous truth” of the “civilized” human condition, and its inscriptions on human and non-human bodies, a testimony which can be given voice, or can be silenced in literary, media and cinematic representations.
We invite papers and workshops that will explore the contexts and ideological justifications of violence, the practices and politics of its representation in literature and film, cultural attitudes to violence and to its bodily inscription, the violence of traditions, institutional violence and structural violence. Specific topics may include, but are not limited to:

• violence and violation at personal and political level
• violence against human and non-human “others”
• witnessing and testifying violence
• voicing or silencing the body in pain
• violent rites of passage
• able and disabled bodies
• violence and cultural memory
• the skin as cultural palimpsest
• ethics and esthetics of representations of violence
• violence and violation in oral, written and film representation

Deadline for submissions: 250-word abstracts should be submitted to the e-mail address This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by October 15, 2010