Welcome to our second Working Papers roundtable discussion. In this issue our papers explore representations of violence and the violence of representation in literary media. The questions these papers propose, and the answers they venture, involve a complex nexus of issues. To what extent are textual practices violent acts? How are violent images deployed to undermine some identities and create others? What role does violence play in the proliferation of national, historical, ethnic, sexual and philosophical discourses? These are just a few of the problems under consideration in this issue.
In the space below, we have asked Emily Butterworth, Andrea Goulet, Crystal Hall and Craig Epplin a number of questions that address the problematic and suggestive relationship between violence and representation(s). Their varied responses indicates that there are numerous ways to approach the topic; in fact, when considered together, violence and representation are irreducible to one, singular interpretation or a stable interpretive model.
