Attending to slow violence: From Pride to Stand Out

Abstract

Slow violence occurs gradually and out of sight, an attritional violence of delayed destruction not usually viewed as violence at all. Relative to more immediately perceived and recognisable forms of violence, the temporal, spatial, and sensational invisibility of slow violence can hinder efforts to act decisively towards it. Drawing on material from ethnographic research in an outer-suburban Melbourne secondary school, I examine how attending to affective dissonances experienced by students and staff led me to witness the school’s first Pride Club meeting, the group’s decline, and its transformation into Stand Out Club. This transformation lifts to view a move beyond the politics through which the group was initially conceived into an ethical response attentive to queer students’ lives. Slow violence, conceptually, has much to offer, including the possibility for recognising and responding to slow violence with an ethics of nonviolence.