Friday, May 13th, at 5 pm in room A103 at Ilia State University, 32 Chavchavadze Avenue, Élise Féron (Tampere Peace Research Institute, Finland) will talk about the corporeal approach to reconciliation and peacebuilding. 

Conflict and war are, in essence, corporeal experiences: human bodies take center stage as the terrain of struggle upon which the intent and consequences of political violence are sculpted, often in literal terms. During war and conflict, human bodies experience death, displacement, disappearance and damage. However, despite the centrality of corporeality to war and conflict,so far research has tended to focus on the narrative and discursive aspects of reconciliation, as well as on the institutions, such as transitional justice mechanisms, that can be set up in order to provide recognition and reparation to victims, and to facilitate relations between formerly warring parties. In this presentation, I wish to outline how centering bodies in our understanding of reconciliation could usher not just a paradigm shift, but also a new research agenda for researchers interested in so-called “post-conflict” societies. I will discuss what it means concretely to center bodies as sources, means and targets of reconciliation and as terrains of resistance to reconciliation.

Élise Féron is a Senior Research Fellow, Tampere Peace Research Institute (TAPRI) Faculty of Social Sciences

2022