Workshop: Biopower and Physical Violence: Embodied Experiences in Communist Europe

/ Termine

Workshop: Biopower and Physical Violence: Embodied Experiences in Communist Europe

Veranstalter
Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam (ZZF)
Veranstaltungsort
Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF), Am Neuen Markt 9d, 14467 Potsdam, Germany
Ort
Potsdam
Land
Deutschland
Vom - Bis
24.01.2014 -
Website
Von
Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam

Departing from Michel Foucault, notably from his History of Sexuality, the biopolitical argument that a person’s body is a site of control is now well established. Applied to Communist Europe, the Foucauldian biopolitical perspective relativizes the singularity of communist would-be ‘totalitarianism’ (modern Western states have displayed distinct ‘totalitarian’ tendencies in the exercise of their rule, too) and shifts the analysis “onto a terrain that is irreducible to traditional terms like democracy, power, and ideology” (Robert Esposito.) Without denying the existing differences between communism and democracy, it greatly reduces the importance of ideology and of the East/West divide. It shifts the accent onto what eventually made a crucial long-term difference between the two systems, i.e. the construction of citizenship. By involving the notions of consent and bodily integrity, we will also bring into play physical violence, especially as applied to women.

Funded by the Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz e.V. (WGL)
Concept: Muriel Blaive, Thomas Lindenberger

Please register by sending an email to Stephanie Karmann: karmann@zzf-pdm.de

Programm

Programme

08:45-09:00
Jan C. Behrends (ZZF Potsdam)
Welcome Words and Presentation of the Project "Physical Violence and State Legitimacy in Late Socialism"

Moderator: Thomas Lindenberger (ZZF Potsdam)

09:00-09:30
Christian König (Friedrich-Schiller University, Jena)
Individual Experiences of Women (and Men) with Hormonal Contraception in the GDR

15 minutes discussion

09:45-10:15
Muriel Blaive (Charles University, Prague)
Childbirth as an Embodied Experience: Women, Gender, and Biopower in Post-1968 Czechoslovakia

15 minutes discussion

10:30-10:45: Coffee Break

10:45-11:15
Laura Hottenrott (Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin)
Kombinat der Sonderheime für Psychodiagnostik und pädagogisch-psychologische Therapie (1964 - 1987)

15 minutes discussion

11:30-12:00
Fanny Le Bonhomme (Université Rennes 2 / ZZF Potsdam)
Macht und Kommunismus in der DDR: Erfahrungen von Patienten der Psychiatrischen-und Nervenklinik der Charité (Ost-Berlin, 1960-1968)

15 minutes discussion

12:15-12:45
General discussion on all four papers

Break

Moderator: Jennifer Rasell (ZZF Potsdam)

14:00-14:30
Agnès Arp (Friedrich-Schiller University, Jena)
Demütigungen Strafen, Schläge, Drohungen und öffentliche Bloßstellungen: erinnerte Gewalt von ehemaligen Heimkindern aus Spezialheimen der DDR

15 minutes discussion

14:45-15:15
Barbara Klich-Kuczewska (Jagiellonian University of Krakow)
“That is a House of Fears”. Women and Their Experience of Violence in Postwar Poland

15 minutes discussion

15:30-15:45 Coffee Break

Moderator: Annelie Ramsbrock (ZZF Potsdam)

15:45-16:30
General Discussion

Kontakt

Muriel Blaive

Charles University in Prague

mblaive@gmail.com