Discursive Discourses of Political Violence

Nations across the globe have in one way or another experienced political violence. Interestingly, political violence can also be triggered by antagonistic views of the future by parties with a shared history. Available evidence reveals that political violence is painfully debilitating as it cripples educational, social, economic, and political sectors. As a result, religious, political and business leaders as well as the media and all who desire peace often spearhead call for prevention of political violence or the resolution of the same when it flares. Discursively constructed calls for peace are not always peaceful or neutral. They are positioned statements that reveal assumed causes and that apportion blame and responsibility in ways that might lay the foundation of future conflicts or lead to entrenchment of antagonistic beliefs that fuel an ongoing conflict. With the foregoing in perspective, a discussion/ focus on narratives of political violence with the aim of finding out how ideas about the future and the past are drawn into discourses of assumed social, political and economic positions affirmed and/or contested. This session welcomes papers that analyse language to reveal ‘acts of positioning’ by various actors and the strategies with which these actors define their role, their sense of being, disruption of their sense of being and their sense of duty and action for themselves and others in light of political violence. It will unearth how parties to a conflict assign the roles of victim, aggressor, hero or villain.