Kohl ‘s 2016 Summer edition is out with the theme “Beyond Victims and Savages – The Complexities of Violence, Resistance, and Pleasure”.
“Going beyond the dichotomy of victims and savages entails a nuanced understanding of violence. Such an understanding perceives mainstream violence as indivisible from other paradigms of large-scale oppression – hegemony, socioeconomic injustice, institutionalization, neoliberalism, occupation… It also accounts for the normalized violence we live on a daily basis, in silent acts of coercion, harassment, bullying, and self-damage, and the ways in which they are informed by macro instances of violence, and vice versa. But most importantly, historicizing violence requires the recognition and celebration of pleasure and resistance, even in violent contexts. It challenges our stance on certain acts perceived as violence, especially in contexts of self-care, self-protection, consensual pleasure, and resistance movements.”