These keynote lectures are part of the Doctoral Schools course “Representations of Violence in Literature and Other Media” hosted by Ghent University on 4-5 May 2023.

• Jenny Wüstenberg (Nottingham Trent University), Democratic Memory in Germany and Beyond  
• Pavan Malreddy (Goethe University Frankfurt), Familiar Foes: Lovers, Rebels, and the Intimacy of Violence in Global Anglophone Literatures
• Jordana Blejmar (University of Liverpool), Miniatures, Models, and Merchandising in Cold War Argentina
• Esther Marijnen (Wageningen University and Research), Representing Green Violence: Frames of War, Commodification and Spectacularization

All lectures will take place in Het Rustpunt – Prinsenzaal (entrance Burgstraat 116 or Prinsenhof 39, 9000 Gent) and  are open to everyone who is interested. Please register here.

Each keynote speaker will give a lecture on their area of expertise related to the topic of violence, followed by a Q&A session. You are welcome to attend as many lectures as you like, but registration is mandatory. After each keynote lecture, there will be a guided reading session on the topic of violence in literature and other media. If you would like more information or if you are interested in participating in these reading sessions as well, please reach out to liselotte.vandergucht@ugent.be.

Democratic Memory in Germany and Beyond (4 May 2023, 09:15 – 10:15)

Prof. Jenny Wüstenberg will discuss what the history of Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung and current memory debates in Germany can tell us about the relationship between memory and democracy. By way of reviewing key shifts in memory politics in the Federal Republic since 1945, she argues that we need to take into account normative, representative, civic, and representational elements in how we conceptualise democratic memory. This can help us to consider systematically how remembering historical wrongs impacts democracy over time in this case and in others.

Jenny Wüstenberg (Nottingham Trent University) is Professor of History & Memory Studies at Nottingham Trent University and the Director of the Centre for Public History, Heritage and Memory there. She is the co-founder and past Co-President of the Memory Studies Association, as well as Chair of the COST Action on “Slow Memory: Transformative Practices in Times of Uneven and Accelerating Change” (2021-25). She is the author of Civil Society and Memory in Postwar Germany (Cambridge UP 2017, in German LIT Verlag/Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung 2020) and the co-editor, most recently, of Agency in Transnational Memory Politics (with Aline Sierp, Berghahn 2020), the Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism (with Yifat Gutman, 2023), and De-Commemoration: Removing Statues and Renaming Places (with Sarah Gensburger, in English with Berghahn and in French with Fayard in 2023). Her research interests concern the contentious politics of memory, memory and democracy, slow-moving change such as biodiversity loss, and the memory of family separation policies. More information: https://jennywustenberg.com/

Familiar Foes: Lovers, Rebels, and the Intimacy of Violence in Global Anglophone Literatures  (4 May 2023, 13:45 – 14:45)

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, many nation states in the postcolonial world – even those least affected by religious terrorism – jumped on the “war on terror” bandwagon in an attempt to contain the threats posed by the organized violence of dissident minorities and other marginalized groups. Since 2001, for instance, insurgent groups from India to the Philippines and Nigeria to Burma were labeled as “terrorist” by their respective governments in spite of the colonial origins of these conflicts, and more importantly, their postcolonial continuities.

While a number of critics have rejected such wholesale characterization of rebels, dissidents, insurgents or ethnic nationalists as terrorists, much of postcolonial literary criticism after 9/11 remains solely preoccupied with counter-discourses to Orientalist and imperialist representations of migrants, Muslims and religious nationalists. This approach fulfills a self-serving purpose: far from accounting for the modalities of insurgency violence in literary texts from the postcolony, it concerns itself with the crisis in Western representations of terrorism itself. Instead of treating the critique of terrorism as the object of critical terrorism or counter-Orientalist discourses, this paper attempts to narrate, theorize and, more importantly, articulate the modes and modalities of violence that shape the socio-political mantle of post-independence Burmese society.

Drawing from an emerging corpus of Anglophone texts, this talk suggests that while there is an attempt to record the periodic acts of terrorism as indispensable, if not inevitable, to meet the respective political demands of the marginalized ethnic communities in the postcolonial world, the figures of terrorism themselves undergo constant transformation; from insurgents, rebels, lovers and neighbours to the victims of state or counter-terrorism itself. To capture the social pressures that forge the means of such disfiguration, I propose the notion of ‘intimate violence’ as a form of organized violence employed by insurgents and dissidents which is made familiar to them by their most ‘intimate enemy’ (Nandy, 1983) – be it the state, the sovereign or the forces of foreign aggression. The embodied reception of the enemy’s violence, this paper argues, is reenacted as the insurgent violence that is often appropriated by the discourses of ‘terrorism’ and the ‘war in terror’.

Pavan Malreddy teaches English Literature at Goethe University Frankfurt. He has written widely on terrorism and organized violence in postcolonial literature. His recent publications include a monograph Insurgent Cultures: World Literatures and Narratives of Violence from the Global South (forthcoming with Cambridge UP), and co-edited collections, Violence in South Asia: Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge, 2019), “Writing Brexit: Colonial Remains” (Journal of Postcolonial Writing 57.5, 2020), and Mapping World Anglophone Studies (forthcoming with Routledge).

Miniatures, Models, and Merchandising in Cold War Argentina  (5 May 2023, 09:15 – 10:15)

Dr. Blejmar will discuss some preliminary findings from her AHRC-funded fellowship entitled Cold War Toys: Material Cultures of Childhood in Argentina (2022-24). The project highlights the importance of looking at ‘history from below’, particularly in relation to the role played by objects that frame our everyday lives, but which often pass unnoticed, within contentious periods of history. Some of the project’s outcomes include an exhibition at the Memory Park in Argentina, a photo-book (forthcoming with Aldgate Press) and several academic publications.

Recent years have seen a ‘material turn’ and a ‘return to things’ as part of a move away from issues of representation and subject-centered approaches to culture and history. New scholarly work in the area, particularly so-called ‘new materialisms’ research, questions the opposition between object and subject, and interrogates the nonhuman ‘agency of things’ (Brown). Within this framework, this paper will look at the role that toys, miniatures, models and merchandising played in the political violence of the 1970s and 1980s in Argentina. From replicas of the infamous green Ford Falcon car used by the military to kidnap political opponents, to Malvinas/Falklands toys and boardgames, the paper will reflect on the ‘vibrancy’ (Bennett) of (play)things, and the histories and emotions entangled (Latour) in their materiality.

Jordana Blejmar joined the School of the Arts at the University of Liverpool in 2015, after previously working on an AHRC-funded project on Latin American Digital Art in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures. Before moving to Liverpool she was a Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London. Originally a Literature graduate from the University of Buenos Aires, she received her doctorate from the University of Cambridge where she was a Gates scholar. She is the PI of the AHRC-funded project Cold War Toys: Material Cultures of Childhood in Argentina (2022-2024).

Representing Green Violence: Frames of War, Commodification and Spectacularization (5 May 2023, 13:45 – 14:45)

This lecture focusses on representations of ‘green violence’ in various media outlets– “the deployment of violent instruments and tactics towards the protection of nature and various ideas and aspirations related to nature conservation” (Büscher and Ramutsindela, 2016). Via the work of Judith Butler we will unravel how different media productions promote and further propel various ‘war logics’ within biodiversity conservation; which pits so-called “saviours” against “enemies” of nature. This polarization hinges on the dehumanization of people living close to protected areas, steeped in racism and paternalistic power relations. When the deployment of green violence becomes represented as a form of “self-defence” – as pre-emptive strikes to preserve nature – it contributes to the justification of various human rights abuses in and around protected areas. What it more, is that “we” as consumers of these media representations are actively invited to support forms of green militarisation, through donations, or through forms of “eco-war tourism”.

Dr. Esther Marijnen is an Assistant Professor at the Sociology of Development and Change (SDC) group at Wageningen University and Research. She previously worked at the universities of Ghent and Sheffield. As a political ecologist Esther works on nature-society relations in areas of armed conflict. She in particular studies the militarization of nature conservation, processes of environmental change in violent environments and the intersection between geography, authority and war.