EPISTEMIC VIOLENCE

Panel at the Annual Colloquium of the German Association for Peace and Conflict Studies (AFK), with contributions by  Michael Berndt, Christine Schweitzer, Julia Nennstiel and David Scheuing (30 March 2023)

Not only since the beginning of the war of aggression against Ukraine do pacifist and antimilitarist positions seem to be on ‘lost ground’. But the accelerated, also discursive, cognitive and affective militarization of discourses and policies no longer leads only to ignorance or a sneer, but opens up space for discrediting and delegitimizing in sharp tones. At the same time, paradoxically, a genuine ‘European peace order’ is invoked in public discourse to justify rearmament and militarization. This seemingly contradictory change is also reflected in peace and conflict research – visible in the sometimes public disputes among colleagues. In view of the war ‘on Europe’s doorstep’, researchers, teachers and practitioners of peace work are increasingly struggling for their own position. Furthermore, post- and decolonial peace and conflict research has shown in recent years that commitments to freedom from violence and pacifism are often due to an epistemically and geopolitically based Eurocentric privilege and that European peace can only be maintained at the price of global relations of exploitation and their armed ‘defense’ in the distant elsewhere. So the question arises: Do pacifist and anti-militarist positions still or again have a substantial contribution to make to a coming post-Eurocentric peace order?

Workshop at the Centre for Peace Research and Peace Education of the University of Klagenfurt (in presence) in co-operation with the Chair for Political Science, Peace and Conflict Research at the University of Augsburg. In presence follow-up to the online workshop held in October 2021  (6-8 July 2022),  Conference Report in Wissenschaft & Frieden

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Online Guest Lecture with Gundula Ludwig (Center Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, University of Innsbruck) at the Centre for Peace Research and Peace Education of the University of Klagenfurt (19 January 2022)

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Peace Research, Peace Education and (De)Coloniality, workshop at the Centre for Peace Research and Peace Education of the University of Klagenfurt in co-operation with the Chair for Political Science, Peace and Conflict Research at the University of Augsburg (27-29 October 2021)

Political Islam. Construction and Function of an Enemy Image, Lecture and Discussion [in German] with Farid Hafez and Helmut Krieger, Centre for Peace Research and Peace Education, Department of Educational Science and Research, University of Klagenfurt (31 May 2021)

No War – KnowWar. Doing Research in Solidarity in Times of Revolts and War, Lecture by and Discussion with Helmut Krieger [in German], Centre for Peace Research and Peace Education, Department of Educational Science and Research, University of Klagenfurt (16 October 2020)

Book Launch, Lecture and Discussion [in German], online, 1 July 2020, 17.30-19.30

Epistemic violence has been shaping the world for centuries – it is time we learn how to better understand it.

Lecture: Claudia Brunner, University of Klagenfurt, Centre for Peace Research and Peace Education at the Department of Educational Science and Research

Discussant: Aram Ziai, University of Kassel, Department for Social Sciences

Chair: Manuela Boatcă, University of Freiburg, Institute for Sociology

An event organized by the Centre for Peace Research and Peace Education at the University of Klagenfurt and Women’s Solidarity, Vienna.

Utopias and Visions for Peace and Conflict Studies‘ Reality, Conference of the Network for Peace and Conflict Studies in Austria (NeFKÖ), Stadtschlaining (29 and 30 November 2019)

Panel held [in German] at the Annual Conference of the German Association for Peace and Conflict Studies (AFK), 13 April 2018, Berlin; panel contributions by Sabine Jaberg, Michael Berndt and Thomas Mickan

The European and global political context has undergone massive change since the early beginnings of institutionalized Peace and Conflict Research. The same is true for ways in which power, dominance, and violence have manifested themselves as well as for the scientific arena in which Peace and Conflict Research has been taking place. What nevertheless constitutes a common thread has been the sustained critique of domination when tackling violent conflicts and exploring the conditions under which they could be prevented or/and transformed. Notwithstanding the fact that critical stances have been losing ground and are not necessarily or unequivocally taken for granted any longer, there is evidence to assume that the critique of domination is being reformulated and adapted in light of respective political, social, and scientific changes by each generation. Against this background, this panel brings together three representatives of different periods in critical thinking to further explore and better understand the change in critical Conflict and Peace Research and underlying or associated factors.

Round table [in English] at the Annual Conference of the British International Studies Association (BISA)
15 June 2017, Brighton

Facing the colonial condition in everyday academic practices and being diversely subjectified by coloniality ourselves, this roundtable focuses on practices and strategies that aim at “decolonising“ this very field. It is an invitation to talk about concrete challenges and limits to this endeavour – and how to deal with them.

These questions shall not be answered through theoretical debates, but start from the speakers‘ own experience, across obstacles, failures, success and best practices. What exactly do we do? And how do we do it? Which are the effects that we expect from a decolonial approach? What are its corresponding practices? How can we avoid co-optations and depoliticisations of the endeavour, and in which ways are we possibly reproducing them?

Based upon the speakers‘ experience and expertise in “un/doing ir“, examples will include publication strategies in a highly commodified landscape of research and expertise, teaching or designing curricula in a eurocentrist setting of higher education, conducting research between the Global South and the Global North, building political-academic alliances across various fields of intervention, or engaging in university politics or unions in higher education and the academia etc.

Speakers: Rosalba Icaza Garza (Institute of Social Studies, The Hague), Meera Sabaratnam (SOAS, University of London), Klaudia Rottenschlager (University of Vienna), Chair: Claudia Brunner

For an example of how to decolonize the university see Report of the University of Amsterdam Diversity Commission

Panel [in English] at the Joint Conference of AFK and EuPRA “Peace and Conflict Studies from the Margins to the Center: Rethinking Europe in an Unequal World”
16-18 March 2017, Schwerte

Workshop [in German] of the Working Group Critical Peace Reasearch at the AFK
7-9 December 2016, Vienna

Programme [in German]
Conference Proceedings [in German]
Workshop Summary

Co-funded by the German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF) and jointly held with the Working Group Critical Peace Research at the AFK

Panel [in German] at the Annual Conference of the German Association for Peace and Conflict Studies (AFK)
4 March 2016, Bonn

Workshop [in English], Queen Mary University of London, School of Politics and International Relations, 22 February 2016

While the notion of epistemic violence is well-known in post- and decolonial studies, it is still still absent in IR, Peace and Conflict Studies, Political Philosophy and other fields of knowledge that deal with issues of violence of all sorts. The aim of the workshop was to discuss the supposedly simple question of what epistemic violence actually is and does, and how we can make use of it in the above mentioned fields of inquiry.

How can we frame it as a concept, and how can we approach phenomena that we would describe with that notion? How can we discern a post- and decolonial concept of epistemic violence from or link it with other wide understandings of violence, such as structural, symbolic, discursive, visual violence etc. that stem from a Eurocentrist tradition of thought? From a post- and decolonial point of view, should we give up common and narrow concepts of violence altogether or can we find plausible ways to link them with a thicker concept of epistemic violence? In which ways would it change our analyses of direct and physical political violence, if we developed a theory of epistemic violence?

At the same time, the concept of the workshop invited to reflect upon how epistemic violence unfolds especially in the privileged and powerful fields of academic knowledge production that the participants – students, scholars, teachers at Western European universities – were part of, and in which ways we can avoid or possibly overcome it.

Conference Proceedings

Held in cooperation with the Colonial/Postcolonial/Decolonial Working GroupBritish International Studies Association

Lectures and Round Table [in German], Alps-Adriatic University Klagenfurt, 2 December 2015

Video Footage

The aim of this event [in German] is to engage in a post- and decolonial analysis of internationalization of science. Even though there has been a growing tendency to view and employ internationality as a criterion to assess the quality of scientific research and teaching, in fact, internationalization and internationality have always been inherent to both research and teaching. Mainly, it has been representatives of post- and decolonial studies pointing out that the scientific system as such is deeply colonial. Fernando Coronil termed this Occidentalism while Walter Mignolo used the label ‘geopolitics of knowledge’ in this regard. Overall, a global division of labor and racism – constituting the foundations for successful global colonialization – are deeply ingrained into the production, distribution and consumption of scientific knowledge at all levels. The lecture by Prof. Manuela Boatcă and comments by Dr. Wiebke Keim and Mag. Florian Kerschbaumer will shed light on and explore these constellations.

Held in cooperation with Universities Austria (UniKo) and the Austrian Agency for International Mobility And Cooperation in Education, Science and Research (OeAD)

Panel [in German] at the Annual Conference of the German Association for Peace and Conflict Studies (AFK)
20 March 2015, Spandau

Conference [in German], Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 16 May 2014, Berlin

What is epistemic violence and why should we know more about it? The aim of this colloquium [in German] is to contribute to developing a theory of violence embedded in knowledge and science. Feminist, queer, post- and decolonial approaches rooted in various humanistic, cultural, and social-scientific traditions will be discussed, scrutinizing both forms of epistemic violence (Spivak) and opportunities for epistemic disobedience (Mignolo).

Programm

Event Proceedings

Held in cooperation with the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Workshop [in German] held within the framework of the Young Researchers Forum ‘What the FuK? Critical Perspectives in/on Peace and Conflict Research’ organized by the German Association for Peace and Conflict Studies (AFK)
3 April 2014, Schwerte

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May 2008 Workshop ‘Critical Occidentalism, Migration Regimes, Neo Racisms, and Euro-Policies’ [in German], Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin

June 2007 International Conference ‘De/Constructions of Occidentalism. A Gender Critical Intervention into the Production of the Self at the Other‘[in German], Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

May 2004 POWI04 – First Annual Conference of Graduates of Political Science in Austria [in German], Institute for Advanced Studies