Sensing violence

What do we miss when we study violence through the lens of the rational, the textual, or the visible alone? The chapters in this section invite us to rethink how violence is registered, expressed, and felt by victims, perpetrators, witnesses, and researchers alike. It begins from a simple but powerful proposition: that the sensory is not just an entry point into understanding the experience of violence but a political terrain through which violence is enacted, remembered, and at times resisted. Sensory analyses, as the contributors in this section demonstrate, do not merely enrich our understanding. They bring into view aspects of violence and power that would otherwise remain unnoticed, unspoken, or unintelligible.