Joanne Brown Symposium on Violence and its Alternatives Bowen Island, October 2001

Abstract

This year’s symposium featured Stephen K. Levine from the Faculty of Social Sciences and the program in Social and Political Thought, York University. Professor Levine brings a background in social thought, arts therapy, philosophy and anthropology to the questions of violence and poesis in the arts and trauma in life. His background in poetics and the theatre provided a foundation for fifteen invited academics, psychologists and social praxis individuals to discuss violence and its alternatives. His paper written for the symposium is entitled “The Coming of Dionysos: Trauma, Mimesis, Poiesis”. A selection from his review “Mimetic Wounds: Trauma and Drama in Psychotherapy and the Arts” (a review of Trauma: A Genealogy, by Ruth Leys, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2000) is printed below.