V I O L E N T

M O D E R N I T I E S
A workshop series anchored at the Centre for Penology, Criminal Justice and Police Studies and
the Collaborative Research Programme on Law, Postcoloniality and Culture
at the Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat, NCR of Delhi

How do we understand, explain and respond to the sophisticated mutations of violence in our
times, without falling into the traps of essentializing culture or romanticizing the indigene? How
do we draw bright lines of collusion between violence and practices of the contemporary? How
do we disrupt the logic which says that violence is primitive and barbaric, while development
peaceful and liberating? Is violence a mere aberration in the logic of civilizational progress, or is
it intrinsic to the ways in which progress unfolds itself? Are subjects that disrupt the march of
progress marked as violent bodies? How does modernity discipline, incarcerate or annihilate
violent bodies?

The ‘Violent Modernities’ project aims at employing a critical theory lens to historicize the ways
in which structures and forms of violence mutate through linear progressive time to remain
deeply embedded in what emerges and takes the shape of the modern. The reason for this
exploration is to trump the slippery slope of binaries like traditional/ modern, progressive/
primitive etc. to understand the entangled everydayness of violence in India today and how
violence is naturalized within the machinations of a democratic, constitutional and industrial
modernity.

Starting December 2010, the project will initiate a workshop series which will be spread over a
year and will feature academics, activists, writers, policy makers, filmmakers, artists,
photographers and performers who are excavating and using alternative archives of history to
unravel the modernity of violence. The presentations and deliberations will be compiled into an
innovative multimedia and book volume at the end of the year.

The workshops will be organized around six broad themes:

Intimate Relations and Honor | The Perversity of National Security | Political Economies of
Suffering | The Violence of Representation | Violence of the City | Violent Bodies/ Violated
Bodies

For more information on forthcoming workshops or if you wish to collaborate with the ‘Violent
Modernities’ project, write to: Oishik Sircar <osircar@jgu.edu.in> or Amit Bindal <abindal@jgu.edu.in>

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www.jgu.edu.in