This introductory essay discusses how the trope of “religious violence” is operative in contemporary discussions concerning the so-called “return of religion” and the “post-secular constellation.” The author argues that the development of a genuine phenomenology of “religious violence” calls on us to critically reconsider the modern discourses that all too unambiguously tie religion and violence together. In a first part, the paper fleshes out the fault lines of a secularist modernity spinning out of control. In a second part, it demonstrates (...) how the “liberal imaginary” revolves around individualist conceptions of freedom and sovereignty that, on their part, become parasitic upon imaginations of disorder, otherness and violence. In a third part, the author demonstrates how these insights call for developing a transformed phenomenological framework in order to give a more sensible account of “religious violence.” Finally, in presenting the articles gathered in this “special issue” of Continental Philosophy Review, some pathways into such a sensibilized phenomenology of “religious violence” are outlined. (shrink)

Our most current experience of violence is not predominantly violence “given in the flesh,” but violence given through the mediation of the image. The phenomenon of real violence is therefore modified through the imagistic experience, involving first of all its emotional, embodied and intersubjective dimensions. How is the emotion constituted in the face of depicted violence, in contrast to the lived experience of real violence? Is the intersubjectivity modified when violence appears pictorially? What specific embodied dimensions are particularly engaged when (...) violence is lived as an image, and not as a real phenomenon? The phenomenon of imagistic violence can also be understood in contrast with the experience of violence lived in phantasy, memory, or dreaming. Also, since each type of image puts into play certain possibilities of depicting violence, making possible various subjective experiences of violence, it crucial to explore how this experience fundamentally depends on the type of image by which the phenomenon of violence is depicted, be it painting, photography, fiction film, documentary or media image. (shrink)