A PhD does not prepare you for a school shooting. My students are afraid. We are afraid. It’s been almost a week since the tragedy in Isla Vista. A student came into my office Tuesday saying, “Professor, you look hella … Continue reading “Week One: Fear in the Shadow of Violence”
This piece is a revised version of two articles originally posted on my blog (juliaserano.blogspot.com) on December 3 and 4, 2012. On the morning of December 3, 2012, I woke up to find my Twitter feed full of article links celebrating that … Continue reading “Trans People Still Disordered in DSM”
Long ago, on the lip of memory, when wars against Afghanistan and Iraq were offered as ways to deliver the world from terror, I recall reading a report on what U.S. military planners took to be the political limit … Continue reading “Moving Violations”
What’s left to be said about time or space or war? Let’s face it — in the piles of books and papers written on violence in modernity, on time-space compression, on spatialization vs. temporalization, on the militarization of everyday … Continue reading “Sensing Distance: The Time and Space of Contemporary War”
Beginning Monday May 24th, and running serially for a week, a new dossier entitled ‘Thinking Through Violence‘ will be appearing on the Social Text website. Check back for essays by Arvind Rajagopal, Banu Bargu, Allen Feldman, Drucilla Cornell, and Mary Louise Pratt.
Hannah Arendt noted in 1969 that Georges Sorel’s remark in 1906 — that “the problems of violence still remain very obscure” remained true.[1]Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, “Introduction to the First Publication” (1906), New York, Collier Books, 1961, p. … Continue reading “Introduction”
If you work on Latin America then you know that there is a field of study there called “violentology,” and there are specialists whom you call violentólogos, particularly in Colombia, where the question of violence has become a kind … Continue reading “Violence and Language”
Michel Foucault observed that, although the head of the king had been cut off, in political theory the king remained in his place.[1]I would like to thank my co-editors, Elena Bellina, J. Martin Daughtry, and Crystal Parikh, for their … Continue reading “Afterword”
Suicide is an act of violence. Most of the recent spate of suicides committed by young gay men have been attributed to homophobic bullying. But killing oneself is not necessarily an act of fear and escape. The one who … Continue reading “Gay Rage”
