Professor Garth Stevens from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, will present a symposium titled “Psychosocial Violence and its Metonymies: Affects, Bodies, Moralities and Subjects” on Nov. 20 at York University’s Keele Campus. The event will take place from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. in Room 303, Founders College.
Garth Stevens
Violence remains one of the most intractable and embedded features of our time. Stevens’ talk will highlight some of the fault lines and fractures in our responses to the question of violence. Focusing on a psychosocial approach to understanding violence, and using a decolonial lens, he will suggest shifting our gaze towards understanding and theorizing the “how” of violence as opposed to the “why.” He will argue against interventionism and instead for the re-engagement with issues of morality, examination of embodied enactments and exploration of affective practices.
A clinical psychologist by training, Stevens is deputy dean in the Faculty of Humanities and a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). His research interests include race, racism and related social asymmetries; racism and knowledge production; ideology, power and discourse; violence and its prevention; historical/collective trauma and memory; and masculinity, gender and violence.
This event is sponsored by the Faculty of Education, Founders College, African Studies and the Department of Anthropology.