Vittoria Borsò (Ph.D., Habilitation University of Mannheim, Germany) is an Emeritus Professor of Spanish, French, and Italian Philology at the University of Düsseldorf. Fellow of the Humboldt Foundation. Senior Fellow of IKKM, Weimar. Member of the DFG evaluation commission (2012-2016) for the literature of Europe and America. Her books and articles focus on Cultural Migrations, Memory and Writing, Visual Cultures, and World Literature. She is currently researching biopolitics and poetics of life, as well as ecological practices in Latin American literature and cultures, with particular emphasis on Mexico.

Publications

Monographs (selection)

2022. “Pulsión de vida” y potencialidades de la paz: reflexiones sobre epistemologías y estéticas de paz desde la literatura en México. San José: Research Advances Collection – CIHAC – CALAS section

2015. Lateinamerika anders denken. Literatur - Macht – Raum (“América Latina pensada de otra manera”). Durham: Editorial dup.

2014. Wissen und Leben, Wissen für das Leben (“Saber y vivir – Saber para la vida”). Bielefeld: Editorial transcript.

2013. Bíos zwischen Politik, Ökonomie und Ästhetik (“Bíos entre política, economía y estética”). Bielefeld: Editorial transcript,

2012. Migraciones culturales – Topografías transatlánticas. Madrid: Editorial Vervuert.

2010. Benjamin - Agamben. Politik, Messianismus und Kabbalah. Würzburg: Editorial Königshausen & Neumann.

Compilations (selection)

2017. (coord.). Colonia, Independencia y Revolución escritas y representadas de otra manera. Madrid: Editorial Vervuert.

2014. (coord.). Democracia y violencia entre lo global y lo local. Durham: Editorial dup.

2014. (coord.). Espacios históricos - espacios de rememoración: la historia mexicana decimonónica en las letras y la cultura visual de los siglos XX y XXI. Ciudad de México/ Durham: Editorial Bonilla Artigas/ Editores dup.

Research Project as a fellow of CALAS:

Title: The/ institution of peace and the power of the living: The zone of indeterminacy as relationality of peace and violence

Abstract: My project tries to investigate the relationship between violence and peace on three levels: I) a biopolitical analysis of latent epistemological violence in discourses of “positive peace” that shape the politics, practices, and lexicon of the movements in favor of peace in Mexico. II) Analysis of the reciprocity of violence and peace, precisely of the processes and material actors that determine the intermediate state of reciprocal dismissal and the institution of peace and violence, enabling the passage from violence to peace and vice versa; III) Exploration of operations, practices, actors, and assemblies in which the power of life is expressed and the resistances of living beings that transform the asymmetries between politics and life, violence and peace. The crises of the modern and contemporary history of Mexico (Revolution, Tlatelolco, Narcoviolence) are considered, starting from the imagination of literary texts and visual images.