Voix de l’ordinaire. L’anthropologue face à la violence
Marco Motta (Université de Neuchâtel) and Yves Erard (École de français langue étrangère et Cours de vacances de l’Université de Lausanne) have translated a volume which broaches the theme of violence against women, written by the anthropologist Veena Das.
How does a human life resume after inhuman massacres?
What remains after extreme violence? How does life continue, despite everything, in the rubble of history?
This book by Veena Das, Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Johns-Hopkins University in Baltimore, translated into French by Marco Motta and Yves Erard (Écoel de français langue étrangère and École du Cours de vacancs at the University of Lausanne), bears witness to the violence that has been inflicted on women since the Partition of India in 1947.
The image she gives, however, is not spectacular. On the contrary, she is interested in the work of tinkering with relationships that appears in the silences, in the small daily gestures, and in particular forms of attention. In this way, she makes sensitive the forces, both annihilating and creative, that run through and transform lives. Veena Das's attention to the smallest details and inflections of the ordinary gives us a glimpse of how damaged relationships are woven back together, thread by thread.
Veena Das, Voices of the Ordinary. L'anthropologue face à la violence, preface Sandra Laugier, edited by Marco Motta and Yves Erard, Lausanne, BSN Press, 2021.
The volume is available here unil.ch/labelettres.