Reconfigurings of Non-violence as a Matter of Sustainability and Response-ability

• Published in: NORA : Nordic journal of women's studies Vol. 26; no. 3; pp. 167 - 181
• Main Authors: Pihkala, Suvi, Huuki, Tuija, Heikkinen, Mervi, Sunnari, Vappu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Stockholm Routledge 03-07-2018; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Ability; Barad; Collective action; Human agency; Intimate partner violence; Non-violence; Nonviolence; response-ability; Sustainability; Violence
• ISSN: 0803-8740; 1502-394X
• DOI: 10.1080/08038740.2018.1461130

In this paper, we explore non-violence and the responsibility for non-violence inspired by Karen Barad's work on the material-discursive notion of response-ability. Our analysis, by way of thinking with theory, is based on a careful engagement with the life of one woman, Lena, as told by her in writing and interviews between the years 2007 and 2015. Based on her talk about violence and non-violence in her life, we produced three stories of non-violence "in-becoming". Through these stories, our aim is to shed light on non-violence as relational; that is, how it is reconfigured in the complex entanglements of bodies, things, abstractions, and histories and how these different entanglements enable an ethically sustainable response for non-violence. In the end, by foregrounding relationality, response, and sustainability, we argue that nurturing sustainable non-violence could be enriched by expanding the focus from individual agency or collective action to the co-constituted conditions of possibilities for response-ability.