ABSTRACT
Attention to violence in public discourse is enhanced by extensive and non-stop media coverage of war-affected landscapes, injured and mutilated bodies, blood, gore and displacement of people, all of which demonstrate the rupture of ‘normalcy’ and ‘exceptionality’. Certain kinds of violence do not get as much media or scholarly attention and do not make it to the public discourse; these include mass atrocities where the death and suffering are neither a rupture of everyday life, nor a body count that can be routinely sensationalised and evoked in the nurturing of political and ideological constituencies, or in demands for accountability. These are slow, unaesthetic and ordinary deaths of ordinary lives. Consider, for example, that we pay attention to war bodies and fleeing refugees from Iraq and Syria, but very little attention is given to emaciated and ‘feminised’ bodies dying of hunger and famine in Yemen. This chapter focuses on the ways in which we have normalised and masculinised what and how we know of violence. The chapter explores the visual, discursive and ethical exclusions and inclusions of political violence in particular, when and who may be outside or inside it, and how it is significantly gendered. It highlights why it is important to talk about violence, where violence occurs, what counts as violence and who gets to speak about violence. Most importantly, it asks how can we reframe and reclaim violence in the pursuit of justice?
