Undergraduate

This module investigates a range of problems raised in the wake of episodes of large-scale violence. We will examine classic and contemporary approaches to: conflict and its “post;” wounds, suffering and their re-inscription; erasures, silencing and collective amnesia; witnessing, testimony and narrative; mourning, memorialization and violent appropriations; trauma and spectral returns; justice and revenge; reconciliation and healing. As we can see, what many of these terms already suggest is that precisely where “violence” ends and its supposed “aftermath” begins is often an open question, subject to continual reassessment; and at times may even remain undecidable. We will also critically explore anthropological analyses of the discourses, practices and institutions mediating internationalized efforts at conflict resolution, such as truth commissions and trials, as well as quotidian vernacular responses to violence, across different cultural and historical times and spaces.  

The module will introduce students to a range of theoretical and methodological debates on violent aftermaths, exploring the productivity of ethnographic contributions. This module is not designed to offer different “empirical” case studies, from various sites around the world, that fit within an already assumed understanding of the “post-conflict.” Rather, it is a theory-driven course, structured to interrogate the presuppositions behind, and established approaches, to understandings of “post-conflict,” “violence,” “war,” “peace,” etcetera, which are invariably shaped by colonialism and its various forms of violence. The module offers critical readings of the literature to develop new and decolonized perspectives on both academic and popular liberal assumptions. It thus fundamentally engages in training students to develop their critical reading skills to facilitate new understandings of the violent structures of the very world we live within. 

 

Learning Outcomes 


	To enable students to identify and critically evaluate a range of major social theoretical approaches to, and everyday understandings of, contexts of violent aftermaths. 
	
	
	To gain knowledge of the history of major theoretical perspectives on the aftermaths of violence both within and beyond the discipline of anthropology and be able to critically assess the contributions and limitations of these approaches.  
	
	
	To facilitate students in developing their skills in approaching academic texts in a critically engaged way, in formulating analytical questions, in constructing convincing argumentation, in writing academic critique, and in taking great control over their own learning.  
	

	To develop critical understandings of the constitutively perspectival grounding of all knowledge and to be able to critically engage with such positioning, together with the ethical issues that relate specifically to the production of anthropological knowledge. 
	
	
	To develop critically informed responses to recent injunctions to decolonize scientific knowledge, in relation to the thematic domain of violent aftermaths. 
	
Delivery method 

A weekly two-hour seminar, which will sometimes begin with a short lecture before transitioning to a class-wide discussion involving active student participation. 

Additional Information 


	Students are expected to participate in and make informed contributions to the discussions of the assigned readings in seminars. 
	

	Each student will give a brief 5-minute presentation in the seminars on one of the required readings for a given week. 
	
	
	Each week all students must submit, in writing, before class, an "Active Reading" response on the required readings.