Department of social anthropology seminar with Henrik Vigh

The Department of Social Anthropology has the pleasure to invite you to a seminar with Henrik Vigh from the Department of Anthropology at University of Copenhagen. He will present the following paper:

"On conflict, potentiality and social invisibility"

Abstract
This  paper analyses the relationship between conflict, social invisibility and negative potentiality. Taking my empirical point of departure in fieldwork conducted in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, I illuminate the manner in which people orientate themselves toward precarious prospects and potentialities, and focus on the way futures are foretold and the forth-coming negotiated in an attempt to pre-empt violent possibilities. Much has been written about the experiential implications of violence, as well as its structural, symbolic or ritual dimensions. Yet, little attention has been paid to the way that violence, not as a manifest violation but as an underlying possibility, an invisible, imagined oncoming event, influences social life. Moving from the empirical to the theoretical, and from the specific to the general, I compare two specific areas of conflict and orientation toward negative potentiality before moving on to a more general discussion of invisibility and potentiality in social life and theory.

Bionote
Henrik Vigh is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. He is the author of Navigating Terrains of War and has worked on issues of youth and conflict in both Africa and Europe.

All interested are welcome!

Best regards
BSAS Comittee