Pharmakon : literature and violence

Abstract

As Edward Said observed in many of his important writings, texts and representations do not exist as if in a void but play an active role in the world and are contaminated by a multitude of heterogeneous realities. Part and parcel of this fundamental quality of ‘worldliness’, violence is one compelling reality which has reached a remarkable threshold of visibility in the contemporary world and which has been subjected to a problematic work of distancing and spectacularisation. The effects of violence are many: it both limits narrative possibilities, restrains by the imposition of silence and demands the most dramatic and urgent representative articulations. This issue of Skepsi draws its metaphorical inspiration from the image of the pharmakon, an ambiguous Ancient Greek word suggesting as it does in its double meaning of medicine and poison connotations of both pharmaceutical remedy and perilous supplement to the human organism. The ambivalence of the pharmakon could elucidate an important aspect of literature and art, in their participation in and testimony to contexts of violence, war and brutality. With their different emphases, the articles included in this issue address the many and varied ways in which violence imposes a worldly dimension of artistic and literary forms. Although the conference organisers intended literature to be the main cultural practice under scrutiny, these critical essays have intriguingly extended their creative scope far beyond the analysis of literary works by reaching into expressive domains such as theatre and the plastic arts and through their dynamic interaction with divergent types of violence, from the political brutality of totalitarian and colonial regimes to the ideological configurations of structural and symbolic violence, or dramatic situations of war and conflict. [Excerpt from Foreword]