Nonviolence and Transdisciplinarity: The risks and rewards of unthinking mastery

First seminar in the Peace and Planet methodology seminar series. 

Are there particular disciplinary limits to the study of pacifism and nonviolence? Must academic disciplines and fields necessarily establish themselves by means of epistemic violence (e.g. policing boundaries, excluding categories of knowledge or ‘knowers’)?

This seminar uses a transdisciplinary circle (physically and metaphorically) to facilitate conversations about our experiences as academics and practitioners working within and across disciplines. The session will probe our positionalities and ways of working as scholars, disciplinary structures, mastery and epistemic violence, and the risks and rewards of engaging with other disciplines.

Format: Opening presentations and introductions to texts by Anne Ring Petersen, Kerry Greaves and Marsha Meskimmon, followed by a participatory circle for sharing experiences of working across disciplines.

Preparatory reading

Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, ‘Pacifism and Nonviolence: Discerning the Contours of an Emerging Multidisciplinary Research Agenda’, Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence 1, 2023, pp.1-27.

Carol Cohn, ‘Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals’, Signs 12:4, Summer, 1987, pp. 687-718.

Lisa Lowe, The Intimacies of Four Continents, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2015 [ch.1, pp.1-41].

Marsha Meskimmon, ‘Sexual violence, structural silence and transversal solidarity’ in Transnational Feminisms, Transversal Politics and Art: Entanglements and Intersections, New York and London: Routledge, 2020 [pp. 100-122].

Cheyney Ryan, ‘Why Pacifism Now?’, Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence 1, 2023, pp. 65–75.

Julietta Singh, Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2018 [Introduction, pp. 1-28].

Suggested further reading

Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind, London and NY: Verso, 2020.

Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks, ‘Revenge of the Patriarchs: Why Autocrats Fear Women’, Foreign Affairs 101.2, March/April 2022, pp.103-116.

Donna J. Haraway, ‘A Game of Cat's Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies’, Configurations 2.1, 1994, pp. 59-71.

Richard Jackson, ‘A defence of revolutionary nonviolence’, in Revolutionary Nonviolence: Concepts, Cases and Controversies, edited by Richard Jackson, Joseph Llewellyn, Griffin Manawaroa Leonard, Aidan Gnoth, Tonga Karena, London, NY, Dublin: Zed Books, 2020, pp.18-41.

Waging Nonviolence