The Somatechnics of Violence: (Im)material, Affective, and Digital Transformations. Editorial PT1

A growing number of philosophical and critical theoretical studies are arguing for new frameworks from which to theorise and grapple with contemporary forms of violence that escape the overdetermined representations thereof that ensued in the decade or so following the terrorist attacks in the United States on 9/11 – which Jeffrey Di Leo and Uppinder Mehan aptly called critical ‘theory's “ground zero”’ (2012: 16). While it is true that these attacks transformed current-day perceptions and theorisations of violence, the ensuing so-called Wars on Terror led to reductionist treatments thereof, thereby eliding the incredibly complex, multi-layered, and lived phenomenon that violence can be. As lived, often bodily-felt, and traumatising phenomena that, consequently, cannot be captured in universal frameworks but must, instead, be situated in their material, immaterial, extramaterial or affective, and – more so than even before, as this double special issue also argues – digital contexts.