Everyday violence(s) and visualities in Africa

Abstract

Discussions of violence in cinema and the ‘cinema of violence’ have tended to fixate on the limited definition of violence in its mimetic, graphic forms. Violence is traced to ‘screen violence’, horror movies and thrillers, a definition of ‘violent cinema’ linked Simkin calls ‘the representation of the damaged body’. This special issue conceptualizes violence in infinitely more interesting ways. It emphasizes the fact that violence is, in fact, not out there at all. Rather, it is all around us, all over us, and is – indeed – us. Not only is violence often invisible to the naked eye, but it is always implicating us such that without us there would be no violence. In fact, there is no single violence. Rather, violence is regarded in the plural. There are violences. Furthermore, the act ofseeing of violences is, in this account, impossible on the basis of dominant, monocular ways of seeing. As such, there are plural visualities as opposed to any one organizing visuality. The trope of mimetic violence is not only layeredon top of other amimetic tropes but is undermined by them. The articles presented here therefore encourage us to visualize violence critically. We are encouraged to see, first of all, the everyday worlds and subtexts that produce,reproduce and sustain significantly finer, less visible, quotidian violences and cultures of violence that march in step with our daily practices