Willibald Steinmetz. Photo: Universität Bielefeld.

Professor Willibald Steinmetz, Universität Bielefeld, gives a guest lecture with the title "How to hurt people with words: Contests over derogatory comparisons (17th-21st c.)".

Abstract

Practices of comparing are an effective, yet often unnoticed rhetorical tool to establish and reinforce power hierarchies between individuals, groups of people, nation states or even entire continents. Such comparisons may be expressed in words, images, or bodily performance, and they exert their force through category-making and suggesting relations – of similarity or difference – between those who are being compared. When people become aware of being debased by comparisons they may react with outrage and polemical counter-comparisons, sometimes turning to violence. The lecture focuses on such moments of contestation in inter- and intra-national conflicts ranging from the era of absolute monarchies (17th c.) till today. The aim is to identify repeatable patterns as well as long-term changes in the practices of making, and reacting to, derogatory comparisons.