Academic literature on the topic 'Micro-Violences'

In a world where kids kill kids every word about violence is welcome. School violence is the new pandemic that threatens all the stakeholders all over the planet. Despite the incalculable documents written about violence in all its forms, and the impressive list of approaches that tried to prevent violence by “doing something”, none of them really succeeded. The complexity of the phenomenon seems to challenge all the brilliant minds around the world. Nonetheless, the multitudes of academic contributions about the issue have paved the way towards identifying the hidden facets of violence and the vast array of forms and variants it can take like micro-violences. The following study is an attempt to analyse the different approaches used to prevent school violence, through identifying their strengths and weaknesses. A new approach -“The Scenario-Based Approach” (S.B.A) - is then proposed to complete the arsenal of methods already used in schools. Unfortunately, the following words will hurt. There is no perfect panacea to stop violence in academic settings and work places. Preventing violent behaviours with a use of an integrative model including all the stakeholders and strategies is one of the smartest strategies one opt for.

Certaines romancières de la deuxième partie du XIXe siècle dénoncent de manière extrêmement claire et virulente les violences sexuelles faites aux femmes. Ces autrices font montre à travers leurs romans de courage, d’empathie, mais également d’une très grande habileté rhétorique et de qualités d’argumentation par le biais de la fiction. Elles paient leur audace au prix fort dans un univers littéraire majoritairement masculin souvent peu sensible au consentement sexuel féminin et qui prétend confiner la littérature féminine au rang d’ornement inoffensif. Ces romancières pour la plupart méconnues ont incarné dans leurs personnages féminins leur douloureuse bataille contre un désir masculin préhensif et violent. Elles ont porté haut la bannière d’un désir féminin libre, reposant sur le consentement verbal et la confiance mutuelle des deux partenaires. Si la postérité a consacré le souvenir de Colette, au féminisme parfois ambivalent, l’on entreprend ici de restituer leur place aux romancières de talent trop souvent oubliées que sont, entre autres négligées, Louise Colet et Lucie Delarue-Mardrus. L’analyse littéraire à la fois micro et macro structurelle de certaines de leurs œuvres, associée à la méthode sociocritique, permettent de souligner les interactions entre les discours culturels, sociaux et politiques du second XIXe siècle et les écrits romanesques de ces amazones en bas bleus. En nous concentrant sur la question du combat contre les violences sexuelles, on aura entrepris ici de revaloriser ces écrivaines polémiques, qui ont consacré leur vie et leurs œuvres à tenter de changer la condition féminine en ouvrant la voie vers une nouvelle éthique de la sexualité.

AbstractMacro‐politics inform micro‐practices. As such, no institution and role‐player within can be thought outside of this framework. As such, the personal begets the political as the political begets the personal. Against the extractive posture of the university that imagines every‐body and every‐thing through colonial apparatus that are also individualising, with this work, I immerse myself in the communities that raised me, whose values I embody as I walk the university. I posit my travails and ruminations in the university as Black Radical Love. I argue, in a manner of speaking, that one cannot display cares against grand injustices while turning a blind eye to small ones. In this way, I make a distinction (following others) between “be‐ing in the university” and being of the university” to highlight the hidden curriculum of the university and how unscripted Black Radical Love always rises to unveil and engage with the violences embedded in the corporate, westernized university. I show glimpses of decolonial, Afrocentric futures that are intricately woven with and into Black Radical Love. They account for the robustness of my scholarship and general movement in the academy.

“Art as Information: Re-reading Quicksand” is a micro-study of an African American cultural narrative through artmaking. My subject is the autobiographical and fictional novel, Quicksand by Nella Larsen (1928). Larsen’s life and creative storytelling provide paths for how we may attend to cultural heritage knowledge gaps about Black womanhood by engaging with the informing processes of art. This especially highlights artwork concerning self-definition and self-determination while navigating life within a racialized, classed, and gendered body. I re-present Quicksand as an autobiographical artifact and living artwork to explore how we may produce an ever-emerging archives on Black womanhood from rereading cultural auto/bio/fiction. This critical and cyclical exploration involves making artworks that reiterate and interpret knowledges that emerge from reading Larsen’s narrative—modeling a framework of how Art as Information (AAI) may be engaged to reexamine personal narratives. This dissertation also reintroduces AAI as a subfield of Information Sciences that engages artmaking as an information technology. It involves the study of arts’ roles within knowledge production: how we craft, document, process, and circulate information through making art. I intertwine Information Sciences with art pedagogy and auto/bio/fiction studies. I also lean on cultural-attentive lenses, such as Black Feminist Material Culture and Culturally Situated Reader Response Theory, to examine how we may tend to cultural knowledges that are historically silenced and disfigured—exploring the liberatory aspects of artmaking to intercept and dismantle exploitative depictions (i.e., visual violences) historically committed against marginalized groups under the guise of neutral documentation and curiosity.

Abstract Introduction This article reports on qualitative research findings from the first study to examine 2SLGBTQ+ populations’ experiences with social assistance (SocA) in Ontario, the most populous province in Canada. Using a relational poverty and intersectional framework, the role of the SocA system in producing and sustaining 2SLGBTQ+ poverty is articulated by exploring 2SLGBTQ+ encounters with SocA and inter-related systems. Methods This qualitative study was informed by principles of community-based participatory research and theoretically driven thematic analysis. The study was carried out in partnership between academic researchers and three community organizations that support and advocate for 2SLGBTQ+ people and/or people living in poverty. Qualitative data were collected from February to June 2022. Results Key themes articulate how 2SLGBTQ+ encounters with the SocA system produce and sustain their poverty: (1) navigating a precarious and nebulous system; (2) encountering the construction of 2SLGBTQ+ identities as “irrelevant” in normative systems; and (3) intersecting systemic, interpersonal, and micro violences. Collectively, the themes focus on systemic factors that institutionalize poverty for 2SLGBTQ+ people. Conclusions Power relations in the SocA system and other related systems such as employment and housing intersect to produce and sustain 2SLGBTQ+ poverty. The production and sustenance of 2SLGBTQ+ poverty are dynamic and transactional, as restrictive and punitive neoliberal policies, dominant power hierarchies, and normative discursive violence within these systems fuse into material inequities and harmful spaces for diverse 2SLGBTQ+ people. Policy Implications Findings call for an intersectional and 2SLGBTQ+ affirming SocA system and inter-related systems that have the potential to mitigate 2SLGBTQ+ intersectional discrimination and related poverty producing and sustaining forces.

This article extends recent work on the political implications of Julia Kristeva’s work, notably Cecilia Sjöholm’s Kristeva and the Political, through a reading of Janet Frame’s last novel, The Carpathians. My intention is twofold: to ground Sjöholm’s analysis of Kristeva in a concrete cultural example, and to redetermine Frame’s significance as a postcolonial writer implicated in the potentialities of politics and social change. Rather than granting automatic political and social importance to abjection, Sjöholm and Frame signal a fresh perspective on the very relationship of the abject to politics, which points towards a notion of politics disimplicated from standard assumptions about its operations. For my purposes here, I am defining abjection (following Kristeva) as that concern with borderline states that subtends the psychic mechanisms by which the subject establishes itself in relationship to others. Abjection references, more specifically, an original failure of separation from the pre-Oedipal space of the mother, although this archaic situation is subsequently transposed, as Kristeva argues at length in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, into various dramas of dietary regulation, bodily disgust, ‘shady’ behaviour, and the like. “It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite” (Kristeva 4). Abjection is the simultaneously horrified and ecstatic discovery by the subject that what lies without also lies within, that to be one is also to be an other. Not that one necessarily lives on the edge, but that the edge is what makes us live. Kristeva also calls the abject and abjection “the primers of my culture,” and this is as good a point as any from which to commence an investigation into the cultural and political effects of her notions of subject formation (Kristeva 2). The word ‘primer’ is semantically rich, suggesting as it does ‘an introduction’, a ‘preparation’, or ‘the quality of being first.’ But which is it for Kristeva? And more to the point, do any of these various meanings rise to the challenge of describing a powerful connection between abjection and the ‘community of subjects’ that constitutes the privileged arena of political activity? This has been a key issue in Kristevan studies at least as far back as 1985, when Toril Moi voiced her concerns that Kristeva is unable to account for the relations between the subject and society. ... She seems essentially to argue that the disruption of the subject … prefigures or parallels revolutionary disruptions of society. But her only argument in support of this contention is the rather lame one of comparison or homology. Nowhere are we given a specific analysis of the actual social or political structures that would produce such a homologous relationship between the subjective and the social (Moi 171). Sjöholm enters at this juncture, with a new take on the question of Kristeva’s political effectiveness, which results, as I shall demonstrate, in a sharper perspective on what it might mean for abjection to be considered as a ‘cultural primer’. In a move that comprehensively outflanks the critique disseminated by Moi and others, which is that Kristeva’s theory stalls at the level of the individual subject or discrete work of art, Sjöholm argues that Rather than promoting an apolitical and naïve belief in artistic revolt, which she has often been accused of, [Kristeva’s] theorisation of the semiotic, of the pre-Oedipal, of the intimate, etc. draws the consequences of a sustained displacement of the political from the universal towards the singular: art and psychoanalysis (Sjöholm 126). Sjöholm makes the case for a reconfiguration of the concept of politics itself, such that the violences that Universalist ideals inflict on marginal political actors are evaded through recourse to the fresh notion of a ‘singular politics’. Sjöholm shifts the scene of the political wholesale. Although Spinoza is not mentioned by name in Kristeva & the Political, the influence of his endlessly provocative question ‘What can a body do?’ can be felt between the lines of Sjöholm’s argument (Spinoza Part III, Proposition II, Note). The body is, in this way of thinking, a primer of culture in the strong sense of a continual provocation to culture, one that pushes out the boundaries of what is possible—politically possible—in the cultural realm. Janet Wilson’s paper ‘The Abject and the Sublime: Enabling Conditions of New Zealand’s Postcolonial Identity’ skips over the problem of how, precisely, a Kristevan politics might bridge the gap between textual and/or individualistic concerns and New Zealand society. Wilson’s analysis seems to default to a version of the argument from “comparison or homology” that Moi takes to task (Moi 171). For example, Wilson claims that “the nation, New Zealand, can be imaged as the emergent subject” (Wilson 304) and even that “New Zealand’s colonisation, like that of Australia and Canada and perhaps Singapore, can be described in terms of parent-child relations” (Wilson 300). One of the texts considered from within this framework is Janet Frame’s The Carpathians. Wilson is constrained, however, by her notion of the political as necessarily operational at the macro level of the nation and society, and she thereby overlooks the aspect of Frame’s novel that adheres to Sjöholm’s analysis of the ‘micro’ or ‘singular’ politics that circulates on a subterranean stratum throughout Kristeva’s philosophy. The Carpathians is a complex text that links New Zealand’s postcolonial concerns to discourses of myth and science fiction, and to an interrogation of the impossibility of defending any single position of narrative or cultural authority. At the simplest level, it tells the story of Mattina Brecon, an American, who travels to small-town New Zealand and finds herself caught up in a catastrophe of identity and cultural disintegration. The point I want to make here by leaving out much in the way of the actual plot of the novel is that, while it is possible to isolate aspects of a community politics in this novel (for example, in Frame’s portrait of a marae or traditional Maori gathering place), the political impulse of The Carpathians is actually more powerfully directed towards the sort of politics championed by Sjöholm. It takes place ‘beneath’ the plot. In Frame, we witness a ‘miniaturization’ or ‘singularization’ of politics, as when Mattina finds that her own body is abjectly ripe with language: She noticed a small cluster like a healed sore on the back of her left hand. She picked at it. The scab crumbled between her fingers and fell on the table into a heap the size of a twenty-cent coin. Examining it, she discovered it to be a pile of minute letters of the alphabet, some forming minute words, some as punctuation marks; and not all were English letters—there were Arabic, Russian, Chinese and Greek symbols. There must have been over a hundred in that small space, each smaller than a speck of dust yet strangely visible as if mountain-high, in many colours and no colours, sparkling, without fire (Frame 129). In this passage, the body is under no obligation to ‘lift itself up’ to the level of politics conceived in social or large-scale terms. Rather, politics as a community formation of language and nationalities has taken up residence within the body, or more precisely at its abject border, in the form of that which both is and is not of the body: an everyday sore or scab. Abjection operates here as a ‘cultural primer’ to the extent that it pulverizes established notions of, most evidently, the politics of language (English and Maori) in postcolonial New Zealand. Later in the same paragraph from The Carpathians quoted from just now, Frame writes that “The people of Kowhai Street had experienced the disaster of unbeing, unknowing. . . . They were alive, yet on the other side of the barrier of knowing and being” (Frame 129). In this passage, we encounter the challenge promoted equally by Frame’s and (via Sjöholm) Kristeva’s unconventional politics of identity dissolution and reconstitution on a plane of singularity. Sjöholm’s analysis of Kristeva provides a framework for interpreting Frame’s fiction from a perspective that does justice to her particular literary concerns, while The Carpathians offers up an engaging example of the until-now hidden potential carried within Kristeva’s conceptualisation of politics, as drawn out by Sjöholm. References Frame, Janet. The Carpathians. London: Pandora, 1989. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia UP, 1982. Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. London: Routledge, 1985. Sjöholm, Cecilia. Kristeva & the Political. London: Routledge, 2005. Spinoza. Ethics. London: Dent, 1993 (1677). Wilson, Janet. “The Abject and Sublime: Enabling Conditions of New Zealand’s Postcolonial Identity.” Postcolonial Cultures and Literatures. Eds. Andrew Benjamin, Tony Davies, and Robbie B. H. Goh. New York: Peter Lang, 2002. Citation reference for this article MLA Style West, Patrick. "Abjection as ‘Singular Politics’ in Janet Frame’s The Carpathians." M/C Journal 9.5 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/05-west.php>. APA Style West, P. (Nov. 2006) "Abjection as ‘Singular Politics’ in Janet Frame’s The Carpathians," M/C Journal, 9(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/05-west.php>.

La présente thèse questionne la qualité en éducation en abordant le concept de « l’a-qualité », par analogie au modèle de « l’a-synthèse » (Perez, 2008). Le préfixe « a » est suspensif, invitant à suspendre la qualité éducative du point de vue normatif pour l’interroger au niveau de son construit théorique. L’a-qualité est abordée dans ses deux facettes de micro-attentions et de micro-violences dans le pays du Cèdre, en proie à de violentes crises. L’objectif de notre thèse vise à lever le voile sur la place de l’humain qui interagit avec autrui et avec l’environnement, constituant l’angle mort de la qualité et le seul rempart contre la mouvance sociétale. La question de recherche suivante guide l’étude : Quelle a-qualité humaniste peut-elle définir l’angle mort de la qualité d’un établissement scolaire afin de répondre à l’incertitude du contexte libanais ? Nous avançons l’hypothèse que l’a-qualité humaniste se centre sur la formation holistique des acteurs éducatifs, conjugue leurs capacités distinctives et développe une institution éco-émergente lui permettant de relever les défis du contexte incertain. Notre thèse s’inscrit dans une approche mixte, selon le design séquentiel explicatif de Creswell (2014), dans une complémentarité des données quantitatives et qualitatives. Les résultats dévoilent que l’a-qualité est davantage perçue dans le contexte incertain par l’absence de micro-violences que par la présence de micro-attentions. Face aux mutations sociétales, les acteurs éducatifs semblent plus sensibles à la micro-violence qu’à la micro-attention, les pratiques dommageables pour les humains gardant des traces souvent indélébiles. Dans ce sens, l’école en devenir s’inscrit dans son contexte, en devenant éco-émergente, apte à transformer les obstacles en opportunités pour apprendre et se développer. Elle forme les acteurs éducatifs aux compétences de vie, soucieuse de leur bien-être, au sein d’une altérité bienveillante, valorisant la singularité de chacun, dans une intelligence collective (De Ketele, 2020a) au service d’un monde commun et non uniforme (Mutuale, 2020)
This thesis explores education quality by introducing the concept of "a-quality," akin to the model of "a-synthesis" (Perez, 2008). The prefix "a" is suspensive, inviting us to explore educational quality by examining it at the level of its theoretical constructs. A-quality is approached in its dual aspects of micro-attention and micro-violence in Lebanon, beset by severe crises. Our thesis aims to unveil the role of the human who interacts with others and with the environment, an overlooked aspect of quality and the sole defence against societal flux. The research question that guides this study is: What humanistic a-quality aspects can define the blind spot of school quality to address the uncertainty of the Lebanese context? We hypothesize that humanistic a-quality focuses on the holistic development of educational actors, harnesses their distinctive capacities, and cultivates an eco-emergent institution to meet the challenges in an uncertain context. Our thesis employs a mixed-methods approach, following Creswell's (2014) sequential explanatory design, combining quantitative and qualitative data. The findings reveal that a-quality is perceived more in uncertain contexts by the absence of micro-violence rather than by the presence of micro-attentions. Faced with societal shifts, educational actors appear more attuned to micro-violence than micro-attention, as harmful practices leave often indelible marks on humans. Therefore, the evolving school embeds itself in its context, becoming eco-emergent, and capable of transforming obstacles into learning opportunities and growth. It empowers educational actors with life skills, mindful of their well-being within a benevolent otherness, valuing everyone’s uniqueness within a collective intelligence (De Ketele, 2020a) serving the common good and a non-uniform world (Mutuale, 2020)

Ce chapitre se propose d’analyser le rapport éducatif professeur-élève (dont l’institution reconnaît qu’il est handicapé) comme s’inscrivant dans une logique de pouvoir de type « biopolitique » (Foucault, 1975), avec des techniques gouvernementales qui visent en priorité à une surveillance de la population handicapée dans le milieu scolaire ordinaire et qui laisse à chacun le soin de penser la qualité de la relation éducative. Or, la relation adulte-enfant dans nos sociétés contemporaines se révèle déjà être un marqueur de violences et micro-violences ordinaires dégradantes, marqueur qui se rejoue dans le système scolaire et qui nous amène à ouvrir des pistes pour nos systèmes de formation articulées à une politique des savoirs pour penser des micro-actions constructrices du devenir humain.