Cultural Discourses and Symbolic Violence 3500-JIS-DKiPS

Since the seventies, "symbolic violence" has become one of the main analytical concepts in the social sciences and humanities. Pierre Bourdieu's concept originally referring to the issue of class inequality has been adapted by many contemporary theoretical and research currents (m.in the iconic turn, memory studies, urban studies, postcolonial studies, trauma studies). During the lecture, the main theoretical assumptions related to "symbolic violence" and contemporary research applications of this concept will be presented. The research context in which the concept of symbolic violence arose was the school as an institution that reproduced and legitimized social inequalities. During the course, both discursive and visual strategies for presenting inequalities and their reproduction in various fields and institutions (cinema, media, medicine, advertising) will be discussed. The exposure and visualisation of social categories and the politics of causality (valid representations of the causes of social problems) will be related to statistical data ("school mortality", poverty, life expectancy, access to health care, disability, participation in public life). The last part of the course will be devoted to contemporary versions of sociodicy – media and colloquial explanations of the causes of social suffering and situational and systematic forms of resistance to symbolic violence.