Università degli studi di Macerata

Dipartimento di Scienze della Comunicazione 

 Osservatorio di genere Isrec

27 28 29 January 2010

Before and Beyond Auschwitz

New conflicts and alternative routes among exclusion, identity and diversity 

Studies and reflections on Auschwitz (seen) as a paradigmatic event concerning the building and the destruction of both historical and political categories have thoroughly inquired into origins and effects far beyond the 20th-century horizon. These study days aim to propose a re-evaluation of those circumstances (historical, social, political, cultural, philosophical) which, even through progressive dissipations of the sense of (human) limits, led to the formation of regimes where everything seemed possible.

Together with this analysis aimed at confronting different approaches and disciplines we attempt to look into the Contemporaneity, especially the new conflicts often accompanying forms of identity closure, in the light of those exclusion/discrimination models which frequently concern the tout court differences. The intent to go beyond Auschwitz, revitalizing an idea of remembrance that is not merely conservative but try to link up with the Contemporaneity, leads to study those forms of conflict oppositions, from the peace movements to the non-violence, grown during the 20th century.

Within this more general framework the following topics will be closely discussed:

Minority exclusion and discrimination

Gender violence: woman as subject and object of totalitarian regimes

Peace movements and pacifism

Identity and politics: gender, ethnic and social class

New conflict opposition forms after Auschwitz and Hiroshima

Conflicts in the contemporary worl