The idea of 'civil order' produces an idealized image of a well-ordered society, obscuring complex realities of inequality, violence, and repression, and reinforcing boundaries between those who abide by norms of civility and those who do not. The focus of this workshop will be on the aesthetic dimension of civil order: on the sensual experiences that give civic life the semblance of orderliness, through images, representations, architecture, symbols, and processes of exclusion. By attending to the ways in which modern state power organizes the phenomenal world, we explore how the deliberate generation of affects, atmospheres, and emotional states shapes the many senses of civil order.

The workshop is organized by Daniel Matthews (University of Warwick), Henrique Carvalho (University of Warwick), and Simon Gansinger (MPI Freiburg). This event is generously sponsored by the Centre for Critical Legal Studies, the Social Theory Centre, the Criminal Justice Centre, Warwick Law School, and the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Warwick.

^{Kazimir Malevich, Mixed Sensations, 1916, Yekaterinburg. Public domain}