Rob Nixon describes, ‘slow violence’, as “a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space”, one “that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales” (2). This seminal work raised the critical question of the strategic difficulties of representing the impact of such violence, especially as it crossed national, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and even gendered borders.  

The slow violence inscribed onto these ecosystems (or bodies) is often framed as having “causes” and “fallouts”. The local ramifications of a hurricane, for example, may haunt a community for decades while the global narrative is retold in sensationalized facsimiles of the lived experience. The scalar complexities of understanding ‘disasters’, force us to confront the rhetorical, structural, symbolic and semantic limitations of conceptualizing ecological relationalities through the binary categorizations of the local and the global. Our constructed narratives of difference and demarcation obfuscate the connectedness that sustain our very existence, hindering us from fostering transformative ties. 

We are interested in exploring the possibilities of comparative analytical frameworks afforded by different literary forms and cultural narratives to anticipate the scope and scale of contemporary and historical environmental concerns. Where does the “local incidence” vs “global phenomena” divide start breaking down and blurring? This panel welcomes a multiplicity of methodologies for making visible the entrenched, inscribed, and/or material consequences slow violence has on the ecosystem and body. For example, how can we negotiate the visibility of bodies that are at the frontline of impact? How can indigenous communities center their epistemology and embodied experiences in ways that build on cross—cultural solidarity? In what ways can Eurowestern systems of knowledge-making be challenged as well as be utilized to supplement alternative forms of knowledge? How can translation, as a linguistic maneuver increase access to larger and diverse audiences without privileging one language over another?  

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Asmita Saha (asaha1@ilstu.edu) and Jordan Grunawalt (jgrunaw@ilstu.edu).  

Topics may also include: 

• Representations of space and time through cultural narratives  

• Reorientation of human relationships with land and water post-natural disasters  

• Role of language in infrastructural representation  

• Archival methods of (Re)Telling and Relaying communal narratives  

• Affordances and limitations of socio-political structures such as nation-states, territories, colonies etc. 

• Reconceptualization of the ‘body’ 

• Planetary networks and their affiliations 

 Remember that any abstract submitted for this CFP can not be done through emails. It needs to be submitted through the official ACLA website. If you encounter any issues with this process, please get in touch with either of us, and we will try to walk you through the submission process.