Deadline: February 12, 2026
This panel examines how governments and large-scale political formations perpetuate violence not only through overt repression but by depicting it as ordinary, predictable, and woven into the fabric of everyday life. Rather than appearing exclusively as rupture or catastrophe, violence often circulates as an artificially normalized condition — it is acknowledged and anticipated by the public, yet it is rarely treated as a problem requiring ethical or political intervention.
We welcome contributions that explore how governments, institutions, and artists contribute to the normalization of violence — through xenophobic discourse, war rhetoric, imperial legacies, or art and language — making it appear familiar, forgettable, and resistant to ethical or political challenge.Possible theoretical frameworks include Foucault’s biopolitics, Mbembe’s necropolitics, Galtung’s structural violence, Nixon’s slow violence, and the concept of everyday violence developed by Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois.
If you are interested in participating, please send your paper title and proposal to Yulia Dubasova (dubasova@usc.edu) by February 12, 2026. We are also seeking a chair and one or more discussants, so please indicate your interest if you would like to serve in one of these roles.