Thinking Violence: Self-defence, Nonviolence, and Protection

Social movements in recent years such as #Metoo or Black Lives Matter have forced us to reflect on the relations between state, sexual/sexist and racial violence, as well as how to best resist it. In fact, such movements ask that we revisit the way we think about violence and how we respond to it: Who is entitled to protection and under what conditions? Who has the right to defend oneself, how and with what consequences? What strategies are best suited to stop such violence and prevent its perpetuation? Such collective speak-outs/movements thus bring forth age-old philosophical debates around violence: Is the violence of the oppressed defending oneself the same as the violence of the oppressor? How then can we best define violence and with what ethico-political implications?

Elsa Dorlin's, Françoise Vergès' and Judith Butler's recent work each addresses such issues, revisiting notions of violence, non-violence, protection, and self-defence from a feminist/antiracist perspective. Taken together, these works open up important and timely conversations on how to think violence and resistance. From a "right to peacefulness" for the oppressed (Vergès, 2020), to "martial ethics of the self" for those who do not have a right to self-defence (Dorlin, 2017), and "aggressive non-violence" rooted in social bonds as care for the ungrievable (Butler, 2020), these three feminist/antiracist thinkers invite us to imagine a

tomorrow away from individualism and fatalist victimisation, within, against and/or beyond violence.

In this webinar, the three authors will discuss together notions of non/violence, self-defence, and protection, followed by a Q&A with the audience. Presentations will be in French and English with French/English translation available. The event will take place on June 9th from 12pm to 2pm.