HomeExpressing extreme violence: Translations, Verbalisations and Figures of Silence

Expressing extreme violence: Translations, Verbalisations and Figures of Silence

Dire les violences extrêmes : traductions, verbalisations, figures du silence

Hablar de extrema violencia : traducir, verbalizar, analizar figuras del silencio

Extreme Gewalt sagen Übersetzungen, Verbalisierungen und Figuren des Schweigens

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Published on Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Abstract

The aim of this conference is to shed new light on the study of extreme violence in the 20th century, particularly from a gender perspective, and to discuss our conceptual tools collectively. The conference will study testimonies of extreme violence (colonial violence, gender-based violence, disappearances, torture, mass deaths and genocide) from a multidisciplinary and multilingual perspective. The aim is to examine the conditions which allow words to emerge as well as their corollary, a framework for listening, so that they become audible in a given period and social sphere. The paradox of experiences that are both intimate and collective, unspeakable and yet spoken, taboo and widely documented, is at the core of such reflections.

Announcement

Argument

The aim of this conference is to shed new light on the study of extreme violence in the 20th century,[1] particularly from a gender perspective, and to discuss our conceptual tools collectively. The conference will study testimonies of extreme violence (colonial violence, gender-based violence, disappearances, torture, mass deaths and genocide) from a multidisciplinary and multilingual perspective. The aim is to examine the conditions which allow words to emerge as well as their corollary, a framework for listening, so that they become audible in a given period and social sphere. The paradox of experiences that are both intimate and collective, unspeakable and yet spoken, taboo and widely documented, is at the core of such reflections.

There are a number of issues that drive us: the languages in which violence, both suffered and committed, is expressed and translated; the ethical, scientific and reflexive stance of researchers in this field; and finally the outlines of the category of extreme violence and the (dis)continuities it underpins, between times of war and times of peace, dictatorship and transition to democracy, continuum and exceptionality. One of the aims of this colloquium is to decompartmentalise the approach to research objects and fields, by focusing on the understanding and categories of intelligibility of experiences and testimonies of violence.

The conference will not limit the presentations to a single geographical area, insofar as the circulation of vocabulary, legal categories, testimonial and militant practices, as well as the accumulated knowledge of violent experiences since the which ushered in the “era of the witness”[2] are among the issues we wish to explore.

Various cross-cutting subtopics enable us to decode the way in which experiences of violence, whether suffered or perpetrated, are recounted. The issue of the social and legal characterisation of violence and its translation is one of the main themes. The category of gender analysis is another: it sheds light on the gestures and practices of violence, the emergence of spaces for speaking out, as well as layers of invisibility and the various obstacles to qualification. The aim is also to place the narratives within the socio-political context that conditions these statements, their horizon of possibilities, but also to grasp what may or may not be said as a function of shared references and in particular the processes of socialised production of memories, in the wake of the work of Maurice Halbwachs[3].

The communications will focus on one or more of the following four methodological, thematic and conceptual areas:

  • Area 1: What makes extreme violence extremist?
  • Area 2: From testimonies to accounts of violence: what languages and categories are needed to describe and translate extreme violence?
  • Area 3: Gendered and sexual violence
  • Area 4: Violence committed and the perpetrators’ voices

The first area aims to examine the very notion of “extreme violence” and, more generally, the categories used in social science research, whether based on legal criteria (war crimes, torture or acts of barbarism, crimes against humanity), political, social or even moral criteria. What underlies the classification of certain violent practices as “extreme“? The context, frequency or volume of these practices, the characteristics of the actors involved or the gestures themselves? What are the threshold issues and effects? What does it mean to speak of “extreme violence“ after the Holocaust? Other related notions may also be discussed, such as the “brutalisation” of social relations,[4] in order to clarify the contexts of transition, persistence and traces of violence.[5] The gender approach makes it particularly useful to examine the tension between the continuum of gender-based violence and extreme violence, whether intra-family violence or state violence.

The second area of interest is the language that is used and the process by which accounts of violence are produced. It concerns the ways and means of bearing witness and translating, or transforming, testimonies into accounts (artistic, scientific, activist, etc.), i.e. the contexts of enunciation and the vocabulary, as well as the various ways in which testimonies are mediated (in particular translations and issues of interlanguage, in writing, in the course of an investigation or in its restitution). A related issue is he way in which individuals appropriate different languages. The figures of silence, ellipses, euphemisms and obliterations in testimonies are one of the approaches we particularly wish to develop.[6]

The third area focuses on gender-based violence and violence against women and gender minorities (feminicide, torture, sexual violence, forced sterilisation, infant theft, etc.), from a thematic point of view, with the aim of documenting more invisible practices, and from a conceptual point of view, in order to understand how gender affects the study of violence. Gendered violence is not always an easy subject to grasp, insofar as what makes it specific is not always described in the sources. Between the acts themselves and the way they are described, there are power relations that influence the modesty of many women’s testimonies. Women tend to play down what they have experienced in their own name in order to denounce what has been experienced by their relatives or by the community. The issues involved in characterising the violence experienced, the sources and the conditions under which these accounts are collected are therefore crucial.[7] State violence constructs gendered subjects through violence that appears in the testimonies as performances of gender. The femininities and masculinities damaged by this violence[8] can thus be an entry point for understanding these gestures and practices.

The final area explores a less well-documented dimension of the topic, by examining the violence committed and the words of the perpetrators, torturers, concentration camp leaders, military and police personnel, in particular, and civilian collaborators in executions.20 Special attention must be paid here to the setting in which the perpetrator’s words are collected (Truth Commissions, courts, prisons, sentencing, enquiries, etc.). Different spaces, such as the visiting room or the courtroom,21 can be used to capture the words of perpetrators of feminicide or war crimes. In the light of enforced disappearances and the still largely incomplete location of clandestine burial sites, what role can the words of perpetrators of violence play? How are they in turn received and used by the victims or the organisations that represent them?

The conference will be furthered by a methodological workshop, aimed at a collective discussion of the scientific and ethical issues involved in documenting violence22 and the backlash effects on researchers of these objects, fields or archives.

Proposals

Proposals, of a maximum length of 3,000 characters, must be sent to the following address: irene.gimenez@u-pec.fr 

before January 10th 2024.

They may be written in French, English, Spanish or German. After appraisal, a response will be given at the end of January 2024.

Organising Committee

  • Dorothée Delacroix, Sorbonne Nouvelle University – CREDA 
  • Irène Gimenez, Paris Est Créteil University – IMAGER
  • Daniel Meyer, Paris Est Créteil University – IMAGER Fabrice Virgili, Paris 1 University – SIRICE

Scientific Committee

  • Anne-Laure Briatte (Sorbonne Université, Sirice) ; Peter Hallama (Universität Bern, Sirice) ;
  • Canela Llecha Llop (Paris 1, Sirice) ;
  • Elissa Mailänder (Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po Paris),
  • Stefan Malthaner (Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung),
  • François-Xavier Nérard (Paris 1, Sirice),
  • Soko Phay (Paris 8, EPHA),
  • Mariana Tello Weiss (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, IDACOR),
  • Mercedes Yusta Rodrigo (Paris 8, Laboratoire d’Etudes Romanes)

Notes

[1] Jacques Sémelin, « Introduction : Violences extrêmes : peut-on comprendre ? », Revue internationale des sciences sociales, vol. 174, no 4, 2002, p. 479‑481 ; Benjamin Deruelle, Nicolas Handfield, Philipp Portelance (ed.), De la violence à l’extrême: discours, représentations et pratiques de la violence chez les combattants, Paris 2021.

[2] Annette Wieviorka, L’ère du témoin, Paris 1998.

[3] Maurice Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire, Paris 1994.

[4] Based on G. Mossé’s concept, see for example Jorge Marco et Mercedes Yusta Rodrigo, « Irregular War, Local Community and Intimate Violence in Spain (1939–1952) », European History Quarterly, vol. 49, no 2, 2019, p. 231‑249.

[5] Ricardo Bedoya Forno, Dorothée Delacroix, Valérie Robin Azevedo and Tania Romero Barrios (ed.), La violencia que no cesa. Huellas y persistencias del conflicto armado en el Perú contemporáneo, Aubervilliers 2023. URL: http://books.openedition.org/iheal/10663.

[6] Karine Vanthuyne, « Ethnographier les silences de la violence », Anthropologie et sociétés, vol. 32, 2008, p. 64-71 ; Ludmila Da Silva Catela, « De eso no se habla. Cuestiones metodológicas sobre los límites y el silencio en entrevistas a familiares de desaparecidos políticos », Historia, Antropología y Fuentes Orales, no 24, 2000, p. 69-75 ; Raphaëlle Branche, Papa, qu’as-tu fait en Algérie ? Enquête sur un silence familial, Paris 2020 ; Aurélie Deganello, « Silences et construction des post-mémoires à Hiroshima », Revue des sciences sociales, vol. 66, 2021, URL: https://journals.openedition.org/revss/7160.

[7] Victoria Álvarez, « Denuncias y marcos de escucha para la violencia sexual en tribunales militares durante la última dictadura argentina (1976-1983) », Revista de estudios de género La Ventana, vol. 6, n° 48, 2018, p. 423-458 ; Mariana Joffily, « Violencias sexuales en las dictaduras de América latina : ¿quién quiere saber ? ¿Por qué los relatos de abusos cometidos contra los presos políticos en la región sólo están siendo oídos ahora ? », Revista internacional de direitos humanos, vol. 13, n° 24, 2016, p. 165-176.

[8] Sasha Gear, « Behind the bars of masculinity : male rape and homophobia in and about South African men’s prison », Sexualities, vol. 209, n° 10, 2007, p. 209-227; Brandi Townsend, « Violentando y rehabilitando masculinidades de izquierda: La tortura sexual contra hombres y la terapia psicológica en las organizaciones de derechos humanos durante

Subjects

Places

  • Campus Condorcet
    Aubervilliers, France (93)
  • UPEC
    Créteil, France (94)

Event attendance modalities

Full on-site event


Date(s)

  • Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Keywords

  • violence, genre, témoignage

Contact(s)

  • Irène Gimenez
    courriel : irene [dot] gimenez [at] u-pec [dot] fr

Information source

  • Irène Gimenez
    courriel : irene [dot] gimenez [at] u-pec [dot] fr

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Expressing extreme violence: Translations, Verbalisations and Figures of Silence », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Tuesday, November 28, 2023, https://doi.org/10.58079/1c9i

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