Theories of Violence
The unfolding event of the civil unrest in the US has suddenly brought the lexicon of an insurrection and a civil war at the level of the actual political agenda. Therefore, it is worth discussing the genealogy and the role of violence. Peter Weibel offers the critique of its different conceptions:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324213999_Theories_on_Violence_Benjamin_Freud_Schmitt_Derrida_Adorno
To improve the understanding of the role of legitimation in domination, Pierre Bourdieu has developed the theory of symbolic violence. Slavoj Zizek argues that symbolic violence is located in the signification of language itself.
The distinction between legitimate and lawless acts of violence does not reflect the realities of contemporary society.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324213999_Theories_on_Violence_Benjamin_Freud_Schmitt_Derrida_Adorno
To improve the understanding of the role of legitimation in domination, Pierre Bourdieu has developed the theory of symbolic violence. Slavoj Zizek argues that symbolic violence is located in the signification of language itself.
The distinction between legitimate and lawless acts of violence does not reflect the realities of contemporary society.
Comments (66)
Would making such a distinction be a legitimate or lawless act? Or would it come down to whose opinion is which?
For example, when a judge calls something "criminal", we all know that this might be quite relative, for example depending on where you are. Would that make any difference?
The "lawless act" was proposed for example by M.Stirner in phrases like "Right is what looks right to me". Marx called this nonsense and a judge might also disagree, I guess.
What is lawless about this act is that Stirner solely bases his judgement on his own decision without any ideological justifications. This cannot be "legitimate" in the common sense as this implies some external measure of judgement.
You are right. To make it clear, it is necessary to bring a more rigorous framework. First, I do not think that somebody's private opinion is worth qualifying as a legitimate or lawless act of violence; unless, by voicing it, one hurts somebody or effectuates some considerable effect. Yet, if one can bring argumentation,
sufficient enough to convince you (and maybe somebody else), it is indeed a performative act.
Quoting Heiko
Once again, my mere opinion about a judge sentence is not important at all. To make it an act, I must demonstrate why this particular sentence is justified or not so that I would be able to question (or confirm) the judge or judicial system authority. Or, I need to apply a
sophisticated rhetoric to make you believe me. In this case, it would be symbolic violence. This concept allows us to distinguish usually indiscernible violence and to avoid the simplicity of the banal dichotomy.
In my opinion, we must turn here to a philosopher who is unjustly forgotten today, Jean-Paul Sartre.This oblivion is due in large part to the fact that he dedicated himself to attacking institutional violence as a class phenomenon and to defending the counter-violence of the dominated - with more or less success. And, always in my opinion, he gave an explanation of why violence is an inevitable fact in human relations. Neither good nor bad in itself, but as a part of the human condition. This explanation is focused on scarcity. He is not the first to point in that direction, but I think he did so with a very interesting lack of prejudice.
Reading Sartre is not easy. Especially his last writings before he went out of his mind. But I found it useful.
Could you bring a few concrete examples?
Quoting David Mo
How Sartre's perspective on violence was different from the 'classical' marxist view?
I guess this a good point. The symbols themselves represent "social hooks" which are or were funded by real violence. Yet, the labeling itself is enough establish social distinction or exclusion. Think about racists using the N-word. Even if all they do for the moment is signify you may be well advised to ... be careful.
Deleuze and Guattari made up for the concept of "regimes of significants", following Nietzsche based on the ancient "sign(s) deep into the flesh" to signify ownership or subjection. With the internalization of those archaic structures we get to allegiance in advance.
The language one speaks originally likely was a language of few brought to others by not too friendly means.
Institutional and structural violence:
Quoting Deane Curtin & Robert Litke : Institutional Violence
Overt and covert violence:
Violence comes in four basic forms according to two criteria: a first criterion indicates that the violence can be personal or institutional, while a second criterion indicates that it can be overt or covert. Thus, institutional violence is often presented as overt institutional violence, as in a war, or as hidden institutional violence, as in poverty. Hidden institutional violence is also said to be structural, in opposition to personal violence.
There are types of violence that occur in both forms. Gender-based violence, child abuse, or racial discrimination, for example, can take the form of blatant personal violence (for example, violence against children), but also in the form of covert institutional violence. For example, legitimizing gender-based discrimination in the workplace or the denial of health rights based on a worker's origin.
Symbolic violence.
The negative prejudices and stereotypes that are reproduced by institutions are a central factor in institutional violence and a trigger for personal violence.
Symbolic violence encourages the adoption of discriminatory or coercive positions in ideology, economics, gender relations, destruction of nature, etc. It is based on an extensive network of values assimilated from childhood and then reinforced by society's legal norms to inculcate in us an oppressive culture because it is uncritical and prepares us for passive and/or active submission to unfair structures. For example, public stereotypes about the immigrant or atheist can support the passivity of authorities in the face of labour exploitation or a legislation or practice that prevents access to public office based on religious beliefs.
One author who has studied this at length is Michel Foucault: the micro-powers, as he calls them. They are authoritarian systems that generate an apparently rational discourse aimed at social exclusion. This happens in the school, the family, the business, the asylum, the hospital, etc. Brutal and visible repression is no longer exercised -or not limited to- but rather a pressing and permanent control to modify behaviour. In his view, the very concept of "man" and the sciences associated with it are a result of the techniques of controlling, monitoring and punishing the marginal elements of populations. It is not necessary to accept the latter in order to recognize the presence and effectiveness of micro-powers and techniques of domination in today's society (capitalist totalitarianism).
Quoting Number2018
There is a big difference between Sartre and Marx: Sartre did not believe in historical determinism and had a "pessimistic" view of violence. If the origin of violence is scarcity and scarcity is the inevitable state of historical societies, the end of capitalism would not mean the end of structural violence against the dominated. Sartre has a vision of history as a permanent struggle towards a moral rather than a historical end. Socialism is a project, not an inevitable stage. Or to put it another way, class violence is a phase of violence proper to the human condition.
In this view, religious violence doesn't make sense; after all, religions are the so-called "spiritual" aspect of humanity and all religions are mutually consistent in re believing in an immaterial soul. What objective then can be fulfilled by destroying the body when the soul remains unharmed and intact? Jihadists should probably think things over before they go into a beheading and bombing frenzy.
What I'm driving at is that violence seems to be born of a materialistic philosophy - a physical object annoys you and you attack that object physically. I guess many problems our ancestors faced were "solved" in this way - with a club to the head of your opponent. This (violence) is no longer held to be the correct problem-solving method by "civilized" folks. I wonder if there are some who think we've got the wrong end of the stick. If there are then they've probably gone through times when a hard punch to the face and the subsequent painful bloody nose brought people back to their senses.
Quoting David Mo
Is that possible to show explicitly that a teacher is exercising a sort of micro-power while teaching a class? She is not entirely focused on controlling the marginal students of her class.
Quoting David Mo
Yes, Foucault tried to make it clear that his conception of power has nothing in common with its
violent or repressive theories. The disciplinary, panoptical mode of power has been entirely different from the sovereign one.
Quoting David Mo
So, for example, does a psychologist (who is completely unaware of being an instrument of power)
apply “the techniques of controlling, monitoring and punishing” while consulting a patient?
Actually, a teacher does a lot of things. Wiping wet noses, for example. But his institutional task is mainly to evaluate, classify and exclude. These are forms of domination sustained with institutional violence. This violence is often symbolic when the teacher qualifies with categories of scholars: "He lacks intelligence", "She is lazy", "He is not prepared for...", "She lacks discipline".... Or even more sophisticated means: IQ and other "objective" tests.
There is an ancient refrain in Spain: "Letters with blood enters" (La letra con sangre entra). It continues being true in some way.
Quoting Number2018
Not exactly. He was against the marxist-anarchist theory of the class state as center of any repression. His model is a network without a unique focus. With his panoptic model he gives is an account of repression that has not ever resort to physical violence. See his criticism of asylums coercions as electroshocks, straitjackets or lobotomies. What is new in him is that the same model included also behaviourism, a form of control that uses psychological techniques more than violence.
In addition he distinguished power from domination. The first occasional and the second institutional. He himself was present in some demonstrations against the violence of domination. And eventually recognised that pure power also has some links with violence.
Quoting Number2018
Of course, he does when passing over the patient freedom. Of course, he does when passing over the patient freedom. Foucault was very critic with the legal powers of "experts" in psychiatry and other "sciences", for example.
Quoting TheMadFool
You have a very limited view of violence. The father who hits his child does not do so to destroy him, but to correct him. And he is violent. In the same way, the champions of violence are not exactly materialistic. The Holy Inquisition and other Christian institutions - if we stick to only one well-known religion - rank first in destroying people and they did it for their own good. And they were violent people.
Broaden your concept. Don't restrict it to physical violence or perverse intent to destroy. You'll see that there are many other, more subtle forms of violence alongside us.
I'm working with the following Google definition:
Violence (noun): behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.
What's your definition of violence?
Nullify or weaken someone's freedom by acting through physical force, threat, technique, hierarchy, ideology, manipulation of language or abuse of weakness.
More simply: through the use and abuse of power.
I think that Merriam-Webster's dictionary and others, by hiding the usual uses in politics and social sciences of the terms of institutional violence, structural violence or symbolic violence, is a typical case of the latter. Depriving the victim of violence of a conceptual resource for his or her defense.
Firstly, our definitions overlap only partially and so the difference in view between us.
Secondly, how do you square your definition of violence with your previous remarks on father-child relationships? Do you mean a father is justified to "nullify" and "weaken" his child?
I think that a teacher’s major institutional task is to include her students into a wide educational network by using primarily nonviolent, seemingly objective professional pedagogical techniques
and methods. For Foucault, the ordinary and the habitual function as the hinges of power.
That is why his conceptualization of power was refuted and misunderstood.
Quoting David Mo
I understand your intentions and the terminology you used. Yet, I think that Foucault's conceptional framework goes far beyond "behaviorism, a form of control that uses psychological techniques"
"A relationship of violence acts upon a body or upon things; it forces, it bends, it breaks, it destroys, or it closes off all the possibilities. In effect, what defines a relationship of power is that it is a mode of action that does not act directly and immediately on others. Instead, it acts upon their actions. Power is a question of ''government'', which does not refer only to political structures; rather, it designated the way in which the conduct of individuals or groups might be directed". (Michel Foucault, The Subject and Power). The panoptical disciplinary mechanisms of control included practices of surveillance, elicitation, and documentation. They constrain behavior precisely by making it more thoroughly knowable or known. But these new forms of knowledge also presuppose new kinds of constraints, which make people's actions visible and constrain them to speak. It is in this sense primarily that Foucault spoke of "power/knowledge." Further, ''government'' covers various non-disciplinary modes of power, such as bio-power, pastoral power, normalization power, etc.
Quoting David Mo
I think that Foucault conceived 'freedom' as produced and constructed , as the effect of power. That is why he was often criticized: his conception of power does not leave any space beyond its control.
Most likely, Anti-Oedipus was written to counter the conceptions of the internalization of the repressive coercive regimes of violence as a primary mode of power.
It is right as a common sence point of view. However, we cannot explain a variety of patterns
of human behaviour by the fear of panishment.
The Anti-Oedipus' desire could produce the collective unconsciousness beside the rule of Law, the fear of castration, or any other feature of the oedipal complex - it works against repressive modes of power.
Be patient. When the State and it's corporate stockholders feel sufficiently threatened, brutal and visible repression will be very hard to escape.
I didn't intend to evaluate the violence. The first step is to define violence. The second step is to identify it. The third is to assess it.
I don't think it's possible to override violence in general. Therefore, only two criteria seem possible:
- Is it fair the end of this violence?
- Are the violent means proportional to the end?
Nullifying a child does not seem to be a valid end in any case. For moral reasons and because of its consequences. But verbal or controlling violence seems unavoidable in bringing up children. The less the better. Persuasion is preferable in almost all cases.
The problem of violence is not the ends (see my previous comment) but the means to the ends. In that sense, simply forcing every teenager to stay locked up for several hours a day listening to uninteresting talk is violence. Even more so when he can be qualified as "unfit" or "very deficient" -or similar.
I sincerely believe that in order to believe that there is a permanent violence in the classroom, you need just to have been in the classroom for a certain time -not much- without prejudices.
Quoting Number2018
Quoting Number2018
You give a soft idea of Foucault. As if he authorizes all means of domination that are not directly violent. I remind you that on discipline and punishment he wrote more than one book and on "pastoral power" he made a very harsh criticism in volume I of the History of Sexuality. For example: Under the pretext of ensuring the salvation of the sheep, the shepherd builds a subtle device of power, capable of unfolding even over the intimate solitude of the believer and leading him towards a new form of widespread servitude.
About the interpretation you give to his idea of freedom I will have to review his books. I don't remember anything about freedom.
You don't need to be very patient to see the state go berserk. We get images every day. That's why I wrote "not to limit itself to" direct and overt violence.
I do not think that Foucault's aim was to authorize the means of domination.It looks like his intention was to make them discernible. He attacked the dominating academic framework, pointing out tohidden and ubiquitous forms of power. These strategies were much more subversive and effective than the direct and apparent criticism.
Quoting David Mo
You are right. Yet, I think that Foucault's view of discipline allows to consider seemingly non-violent
methods of control - when a teenager finds a talk interesting or she is qualified as a good or a gifted
student as ways of exercising power.
Quoting David Mo
Starting from 'History of Madness' we see the evolution of Foucault's perspective on power:
it becomes lighter, more ubiquitous, less attached to 'negative' objects or practices (directly
violent and coercive), and more saturated within wide domains of social practice.
Quoting David Mo
I would like to pay your attention to the word IMAGES. I do not deny the presence of different forms
violence in the contemporary society. I just want to prioritize. What kind of violence is prevaling?
When the mass media shows a series of particular images for 24/7, so that a specific narrative and agenda should become dominating, one could consider symbolic violence as the leading one.
Quoting David Mo
I think that you presented correct, but narrow and reduced conception of symbolic violence.
Baurdieu concieved it as the way to impose not just a set of discriminatory or coersive positions.
It is the set of practises, aimed to make one to accept a certain worldview, together with the set of presupposed values and beliefs. Symbolic violence does not necessarily works negatively. Individuals accept and absorb the norms, structures, and hierarchies of the social settings through the engagement in complex of non-violent and non-ideological dispositions.
Thank you for the excellent point! Indeed, we could think that there is no violence when one behaves as a good citizen in the absence of the apparent state's exercise of coercive or violent ways of power. For Deleuze and Guattari, there is no citizen (or subject) before the synthesis of the unconscious. There is not a conscious I that produces, but a process of production of which the I is a kind of product. The aim of psychoanalysis is to aid the repression of the drives and strengthen the ego's adaptation to reality.
On the contrary, according to Anti-Oedipus, such a 'reality' has no ontological status: it is merely an effect of oedipalized consciousness. The signifying structures that shape thought and an ordinary consciousness of an oedipal, average, or standard 'citizen' are effectively produced by machinic processes in society. This production is not directly violent. Yet, it effectively blocks and averts the development of alternate subjectivities and ways of thinking.
To protect their 'license to brutalize & kill', the police are rioting against peaceful 'anti-killer police' protesters while corporations and the investor class are wantonly looting government treasuries & public-private pension funds. Legacy of slaver capitalism: this neoliberal 'sugar daddy' plutonomy. The Counterrevolution Is Being Televised.
I see. Your definition of violence is definitely much broader than mine. As far as I'm concerned, you've figured out the truth of this unpleasant side of human nature, if there's such a thing. Nevertheless, you will agree that the general opinion on violence seems to be restricted to bodily harm - a kick in the rear, a punch in the face, that sort of thing.
[quote=Ted Turner]Sports is just war without the killing[/quote]
What do you think of Ted Turner's statement. If you ask me, it seems to fit somewhat loosely with your beliefs on violence.
Quoting Number2018
Quoting Number2018
I find Foucault's last five years confusing, inconclusive and full of holes. I prefer his classical phase even if it was also debatable. But at least it was coherent.
Anyway, what I find compelling in Foucault is the theory of power as a network of mini-powers. I think this explains very well the apparent withdrawal from institutional violence that is replaced by a softer but omnipresent tension over civil society. This tension can often be called violence.
But the disciplinary society has not disappeared. (Even the late Foucault acknowledges this). ) When the powers of domination feel threatened the old violent-disciplinary society emerges and we can see in the media the hidden face of repressive institutions in action. The US has received a good dose in recent days.
I think we agree on basic points, including the symbolic violence that is constantly present in the media, parliaments, etc. They live on these things. So we feed on violence every day. Symbolic or physical.
I agree.
I said it encouraged forms of coercion, not that it was that.
If general means popular, I agree. If general includes experts, I disagree.
Quoting TheMadFool
The emphasis on personal violence and the neglect of institutional violence would be a very frequent case of symbolic violence. It is very widespread in the mainstream media and among politicians... institutional.
Indeed. Most show-sports are usually quite violent. Even if they don't - always - kill.
It seems that in their origins these sports were a way to channel social violence. But today it is not very clear whether they channel it or encourage it through initiation rites.
Thank you for an excellent post. What are your opinions on violence as discussed in earlier Western empiricism, such as by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau with respect to the social contract? Do these fit in the categories you provide, and how do you consider their views fitting with Foucault, Marx, and Sartre?
Are there experts in violence?
Don't you think that this is actually part of the problem?
Sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and some philosopher. I don't know if politicians should be considered experts or part of the problem.
It's a question that demands a long answer. I will think about it to see if I can give a condensed answer within my limited knowledge: I know little about Hobbes and less about Locke. I have read something about the others.
I go there: If we divide a problem between diagnosis and prescription, modern positions owe a lot to Hobbes and Rousseau, even if it is to grumble against the theory of contract, like Foucault.
The Hobbesian diagnosis appears in Sartre as violence inseparable from the human condition, but it is rejected by Marx, who considers the origin of violence in relation to private property, in a similar way to Rousseau.
The Hobbesian prescription has been classically interpreted as a defense of absolutism and that does not please anyone today, except the Fascists. But there are more recent interpretations that believe it is possible to read Hobbes as a defender of absolute sovereignty... of the people. That would be more in line with the idea of sovereignty of the last Foucault. Naturally, Marx and Sartre differ from all this, because they do not believe that the solution lies in a people divided into classes, however controlled private property may be, as in the Rousseaunian model. But if you look, neither Marx nor Sartre says that the end of violence, or at least the conflict, comes in a classless society. Sartre says it expressly in the Critique of Dialectical Reason and Marx was never anything precise about the classless society. He is more a theorist of the end of capitalism than of the prediction of socialism. The end of history would be the classless society, but how post-history would be is an enigma.
I hope this will give you an answer. I don't like this jumble I've written at all. But, unlike Groucho Marx, I don't have another one.
Of course, the similarities I have pointed out are only similarities. The differences are also many.
I see. I want to ask you a simple question and this will probably sound very naive. Anyway...when people talk of violence what do they actually mean and when an "expert" does a study on violence what are the various human actions that fall under the category of violence?
Locke says personal defense is necessary to protect property. Would that be considered institutional violence, because it protects a system, or personal violence because it protects an individual too?
It's not a naive question. It is easy to distinguish many violent behaviors at both the act and language levels. The violence of a defender at a football match, the violence of a lover having sex, the violence of a political discourse. I don't think there is such a big difference between common language and experts. Some points are more debatable, especially when the expert analyses some supposed scientific or objective discourse. The violence in the speeches of Jesus Christ, the patriotic emotion, the scientific studies or the paternalistic sermons are more difficult to accept. Violence in ratings, irony, jokes... with our wife, children or my best friend. In the end everyone is violent... more or less. The problem is with those who can't control it or use violence for their own benefit.
I would say that the institutions in charge of defending private property through violence are the legal ones, state or private. But personal violence against a banker who has stolen your savings, as they usually do, cannot be considered institutional. Although it may be more than understandable. Keep in mind that not all personal violence is reprehensible.
Right. The issue of the relationship between social classes and violence is not easy. Even if property is thought of as theft, our society is complex enough not to believe in simple recipes. If you are able to eliminate poverty and inequality you will probably have eliminated two major causes of violence. Foucault himself, who was an anti-Marxist, recognized that exploitation provides a good framework for explaining most of the violence that capitalism generates. But it is not clear that the framework explains everything.
Now you've lost me. I don't know the exact reason why but some here are of the opinion that when one assigns a quality to everything it becomes meaningless. A couple of months ago I tried this on someone by asserting that all value is hedonistic and a member responded that claiming so makes hedonism meaningless. What are your views on this matter?
Quoting David Mo
Ah! So, you feel that the ends justify the means but what if the means, as is the case with violence, is in direct contradiction to the ends?
Yes, I think so. If you read Weibel’s essay, mentioned in OP, you could find that there is the evolution of perspectives on violence, starting from Benjamin and Schmitt to Derrida and Agamben. The simple view on violence considers it as the direct and primary device of the state’s domination. On the contrary, their thought is based on the assumption of the negation of the negation. The primary domain of violence has gradually become hidden and indiscernible. Thus, for Agamben, the dialectics of inclusion/exclusion leads to conclude that “human life…included in the juridical order solely in the form of its exclusion (that is, of its capacity to be killed)” (Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer).
Agamben goes as far as to propose that fascist concentration camps constitute the
paradigmatic model for the contemporary political body. Yet, for sure, the Nazi concentration camp doesn’t comprise a privileged figure of reflection on violence. Nowadays, totalization or ham-fisted determination is not a result of centralized, discernible, and coercive modes of power. Even fascism, the most violent political regime, should be explained as an effect of founding productive processes. For Deleuze and Guattari, beyond ideology or repression, there is the more fundamental level of power that should be conceptualized in terms of desire: “the masses, at a certain point and under a certain set of conditions, wanted fascism, and it is this perversion of the desire of the masses that need to be accounted for.” The problem of ‘how can power be desired?’, (‘how can the subjugated group support domination?’) has allowed to develop the conceptual framework, explaining fascism as well as the contemporary capitalist production of our subjectivities. Our lives are not shaped by the model of bare life that submits to sovereign power. They are constituted by capital's grasp on our psyches, in particular through the control which it exercises over the media, advertising, opinion polls, the flow of deformable and transformable coded figures.
They're two different things. If you say that all x is y (all pain is pleasure) and you are identifying x and y (x=y) you are making a tautology that means nothing. Something like "men do what they are inclined to do".
This is not my case. I'm not identifying all men with violence. I admit that men do violent and non-violent actions. "Every man is violent" is a way of saying that there is a duality in men. It doesn't mean that being a man is the same as being violent.
I hope I've explained myself.
Quoting TheMadFool
I think the relationship between means and end is complicated.
In principle, it is the end that justifies the means. When we say that the end does not justify the means, it is for two reasons:
- Because it's not evident that these means actually produce this end.
- Because some of the means are more or equally relevant than the end and may negate its value.
In the first scenario, we have the case of Kautsky vs. Lenin. In the second, we have the case of Ivan Karamazov vs. God.
Kautsky believed that revolution was not an effective path to socialism.
Ivan Karamazov believed that the death of children on Earth invalidated the happiness of Heaven.
Sure. It's popularly known as the carrot and stick policy. If the carrot doesn't work to get the donkey to walk, the stick is used. The problem is that at the end you don't know if people are because of the carrot or because they are afraid of the stick. Within human psychology there is a reluctance to recognize that if you do something it is because you are a coward. Then you become a fanatic of the tyrant and hate those who draw attention to your cowardice and immorality. This is a classic of all cultures and submissions.
The coward who is caught hitting the weakest one with the herd, instead of stopping, he will intensify the blows to show that he does it this way because he is very macho.
What is duality? Do you mean that it (duality) explains your position on violence? How?
Quoting David Mo
Agreed. Thanks
It is correct in general. But it does not explain how fascism was possible. Beyond ideology, the certain leadership, the economic, political, and social crisis, the masses wanted fascism
and desired their own repression. Therefore, in the end, the masses are responsible for the crimes of the Nazi regime.
Humans are violent and compassionate, or cooperative, if you like. There is a predisposition to one thing or another that society reinforces or represses. This duality may explain how basically peaceful men can react in an aggressive sublimated or non-sublimated way.
I am not the first to have observed, this is far more frequent behavior in the USA and middle east than anywhere else. The British upper classes regard the USA as having rampant animals running all over it, and were extremely critical of my decision to move back, instead of staying after Oxford. Since about 2015 I have to say the rampant animals have increasingly been taking over.
I used to have all kinds of ideas about the human spirit being capable of more than apparent, but after continued efforts in the last five years to inform various peoiple in this country that their opinions were complicit to murder, it has had no effect at all, and I no longer beleive all human beings are capable of genrealized altruism, and a sizable number may look like human beings, but are incapable of acting with genuine humanity at all. The problem is, there is no reliable external indication, besides behavior, so there is no way to isolate them and leave them to their own devices. The USA has had some success capturing them and training them to be soldiers, and putting them in prisons, but the nation has no effective competitor to justify a larger army, and the prison population is already higher than for any nation ever. Bush Junior had a very good idea to get alot of people working in 'security' which temporarily forestalled the problem.
Most recently, no USA paper has had the courage to report that the dead guy killed by the police was on a lethal combination of meth and fentanyl, as well has having several pre-existing heart conditions. This means he could have died without being placed in a nech hold at all. As the policeman cannot be proven guilty beyond doubt, he will be acquitted of at least murder charges. Ive even heard 'Black Lives Matter' leasers state on TV that they will raze the country to the ground if one more event happens that they dont approve of, and quite a large percentage of people, at least over half speaking on the subject, have declared similar intents.
so it seems they will all be killing each other very soon now. I had thought it was going to be a world war, but frankly, not even Iran has gone as insane as the USA, because its political leaders dont benefit from violence. The democrats are currently delighted, but if the democrats had been in power, the republicans would have been delighted. the animalistic violence in this country is now endorsed by its own leadership against itself, from one side or the other, it makes no difference, and the end result it, well I am emigrating, personally. I had enough of it.
That is to say, I wish violence could be rationally explained and categorized, and sometimes its useful to think that way. On the other hand, we are one of the few species which consistently kills its own, and we just seem to have been getting very enthusiastic about that, overall, in the USA over the last five years for some reason.
Whatever the explanation for the formation of a fascist personality, a large majority of the population in Europe (not only in Germany, nor possibly even this one was the worst, speaking of masses) was actively responsible for the crimes of Nazism. The extent of collaborationism was such that a detailed repression of those crimes was impossible. Nor was it in the interest of the leaders of the "regeneration" of Europe, because its aim was "recuperate" all forces against communism. There is a great film about this: Judgment at Nuremberg, by Stanley Kramer.
The height of cynicism: the current Polish government which has forbidden by law to talk about the crimes committed by the Poles against the Jews. A great mini-series exposes it: Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter, Without hiding the German responsibility.
I think we're going off topic. But it's a very tough subject that can't be avoided in a thread about violence.
Can you formulate a theory of violence, one that explains the origin of, perpetuation of, and end to, violence with duality? Am I to believe that, adopting a black & white thinking process, violence exists because of peace? Then I suppose you'd have to explain why nobody is in favor of violence and everybody can't seem to get enough of peace. If violence is a necessary counterweight to peace then this shouldn't be the case, right?
Quoting TheMadFool
Yes. All in all, violence (negatively understood) is not determined through theories and definitions.
It is about the set of political decisions and social practices, approved by a broad communal support. In Germany, there was not public consensus of Final Solution, since it was never publicly discussed there. Yet, the majority of population approved the complex of gradual steps, depriving
jews of their civil and political rights. For most Germans it was quite natural. Agamben as well as Deleuze and Guattari tried to explain how it was possible.
Do you mind expanding on the underlined bit?
Agamben, in "Homo Safer", has developed a theory of sovereign power based on dialectics of
inclusion/exclusion. Starting from ancient Rome, juridical subjects were included in the judicial order
while a sovereign kept the ultimate right over excluded 'bare life'. Later, this mode of power was realized within the Nazi concentrated camps. Agamben asserts that today power is realized through
bio - politics, the control over life in various situations.
For Deleuze and Guattari, the Nazi regime was primarily produced by the investments of the collective subconscious desire, beyond ideology or political programs. Therefore, violent and coercive modes of power become effects of more fundamental processes.
Isn't this a theory of violence? You seem to delve into some aspects of violence in certain settings and that's alright by me. What would be interesting is a theory that explains the cause of violent actions.
You could read Weibel's essay mentioned in OP of this thread.
There is no one theory about the causes of many, if not all, human behaviors. Motivations, reflexes (conditioned or not) or, more vaguely, the drives that conditioned some behavior can be explained. In the case of violence there are many interpretations in terms of frustrations, genetics, social reinforcements, pathologies, etc. For example, how the media encourage violent actions as a necessary and "glamorous" means of resolving conflicts.
If you want a simple explanation, politicians, journalists, priests and others make beautiful statements for peace while stimulating war with their left hand.
The conclusion is that violence is a permanent fact of the human condition and that only feeble attempts to control it - if any - are made by those who can. Two examples: the business of war and violent video games.