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Political violence is a more complex subject than the inhumane brutality of Latin America’s ‘dirty war’ regimes or the revolutionary fervour supporting the ‘armed struggle’ in the 1970’s. Yet it receives little attention from critical analysts, perhaps because the politics are so fraught. That may indeed be understandable, but if anything it increases the urgency of a theoretical, political and moral deconstruction of violence in the contemporary world. This collection of essays addresses the various forms or modalities of violence and the various means of dealing with or moving ‘beyond’ violence. It stresses the ‘normality’ of political violence as it becomes routinised in everyday life in Latin America. It pays particular attention to the complex relationship between sex, gender and violence in social and literary domains. It examines in detail the role of political violence in post-war Central America but also in Colombia, the Andean region and the Southern Cone. It argues that we need to move beyond paralysis or ‘shock and awe’ in the face of overpowering shows of force by imperialism and by the state to reconstruct a transformative understanding of the role of violence in contemporary society.