Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Cultura

The research line “Culture and Conflict” will address the antagonistic structure of cultural representation. Either understood as a ritual structure underlying the birth of symbolic meaning (René Girard), as a psychic mechanism (Freud, Nietzsche) or as a political and social strategy (Marx, Benjamin, Gramsci), conflict supports the way societies work, represent themselves and others and deal with complexity. The group will focus on the role of conflict in the construction of cultural meaning in modernity and on the way conflict is represented by literature and the media. From this overall perspective, the group will tackle the interaction between culture and conflict as a mnemonic strategy that supports the way societies survive trauma and negotiate dissent; as a representational strategy that sublimates images of violence and war and as a political strategy that builds citizenship and refigures identity. The team will develop the following sub-projects:

A - Memory Transfers
B - Violent Belongings: The (In)Visibility of War in Literature and Other Media
C - Cultural Wars, Public Intellectualism and the Making of Citizenship

PROJECTED ACTIVITIES:

I) CECC Conference on Culture and Conflict: “Conflict, Memory Transfers and the Shaping of Europe” 2-3 December 2008.
Call for Papers (Call for Papers)

II) CECC Conference on Culture and Conflict: “The (In)Visibility of War in Literature and the Media” - 7-9 May 2009.
Call for papers (To be announced)

III) CECC Conference on Culture and Conflict: “Cultural Wars. Public Intellectuals and the Making of Citizenship” - 4-6 March 2010
Call for Papers (To be announced)

LECTURES

15 December 2007 – António Guerreiro – “Aby Warburg e os Estudos de Memória”

Researchers: