‘VIOLENCE’ AND ‘THE BODY' IN CONTEMPORARY ANTHROPOLOGY
‘VIOLENCE’ AND ‘THE BODY' IN CONTEMPORARY ANTHROPOLOGY

Summary/Abstract: The paper aims at exploring the issues of ‘violence’ and ‘the body’ in a transdisciplinary way. The analysis is made from a postcolonial perspective with a gender focus, and by reading critically a number of texts from the area of cultural anthropology, with reference to history, politics, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, postcolonialism, feminism, gender and masculinity studies. The discussion is made with a multiple layered perspective in mind and in a multiple layered manner. Personal violence inflicted upon self and others, and institutional violence inflicted upon the social body, in the postcolonial and the neo-colonial contexts are some of the instances under consideration. The starting point is the clear necessity of redefining ‘violence’ in today’s world, with its latest evolutions: the break-up of the former Soviet Union, the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, the spread of civil strife throughout much of Eastern Europe, the so-called wars of liberation of Arabic groups and the war against terrorism led by Western countries. In this new context violence is no longer an act perpetrated by others, but in an increasing number of cases it is being practiced in the very name of self-determination. At the same time, ‘the body’ as the site of violence is analyzed within this new context and with a gendered perspective in mind. Different anthropologists’ work on the clarification of the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ is reviewed within a cross-cultural space. The bibliography consists of some of the most important and well-known works in the area, which were published all along last century, and also some very recent titles, including a Romanian one.

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