Karla Pinhel Ribeiro: Walter Benjamin’s Concept of „Gewalt“

The lecture enters into a dialogue with contemporary art dealing with amerindian and afro diasporic epistemologies, featuring works by Adriana Varejão and others. It relates Benjaminian “Gewalt” to the aestheticization of political violence and all its efforts that culminate in modern war.

Karla Pinhel Ribeiro is a Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at the University Centre of Curitiba, UNICURITIBA. Permanent Full Professor at Graduate Program of Master and Doctorate in Business Law and Citizenship from University Center of Curitiba - PPGD/UniCuritiba.

Brazil and Latin America are cultural contexts marked by coloniality, state violence, structural racism, extractivism and multiple forms of popular resistance. Benjamin’s theories allow us to construct critical readings capable of recovering subaltern historical experiences made invisible by official narratives of progress. Collective experience of dictatorship, forced disappearance, territorial dispossession, ecological devastation, and gender violence give way to politics that are a systematic production of human and environmental ruins. From this perspective, the critical task of Benjamin’s understanding of “Gewalt” consists in restoring political voice to those whose historical experiences were violated by conquerors.

About Arcades Lecture Series

One of the most significant works of cultural theory, Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project (Passagenwerk), was never finished. This 1000-page manuscript brings together rich material on everyday culture and reflections on a new culture of modernity. The lecture series Arcades Lecture Series organized by the Working Group on Cultural Analysis (aka), the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and the International Research Center for Cultural Studies University of Art and Design Linz (ifk) aims to promote contemporary cultural thought. Taking place in Vienna’s arcades buildings, these lectures explore – in the spirit of Benjamin’s Arcades Project – (mass) cultural artefacts and popular culture with their influence on the intellectual, political and physical history.