COML 4017 - Reflections on Violence

(GHB) (LA-AS)

Spring. 4 credits.

N. Saccamano.

In light of the seemingly intractable conflicts across the globe in the last few decades, the question of violence has received renewed attention by theorists and writers. This course will sample some of this recent work to examine how it engages such issues as: what counts as violence, can it be distinguished from force or power, and by whom? Are politics, law, and violence inseparable? How is violence represented in media? Must violence occur as an act or event, or is there also a systemic, normalized violence? What are the kinds of violence specific to colonialism and its legacy, to sexual trauma, to psychic processes, to language? We will read literature from Melville to DeLillo with some recent theory.