Violence and embodiment, James R Mensch

James R Mensch — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:58:50 +0000

Some years ago, a striking exhibition of photographs made its rounds through the galleries. I remember seeing it in Brno, in the Czech Republic. Its subject was the ravages of the civil war in Sierra Leon-in particular, the amputations inflicted on the people there. One particular photograph held my attention: a woman without hands holding her child. She was clearly a victim of physical violence. But what she suffered was something more than that. Regarding her, I asked myself: How could she look after her child? How could she perform all the tasks that a person with an intact body normally engages in without thinking? How must the world appear to her without hands to dress her child or herself, reach for things, grasp them, feed herself, her child, and so on? What sort of sense did it make to her, when its access had been so brutally limited? The physical violence she had endured left its mark on her not just in her bodily inability to function, but also on her inability to enact those senses that are dependent on our having a functioning body. It later struck me that violence is not just physically destructive, but also destructive of sense or meaning. The two are tied together through the role that the body plays in our making sense of the world, be this its physical, cultural, or social sense. Violence undermines this role.

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Violence and embodiment, James R Mensch