Violence as a device for »re-humanizing« conflicts. A functional definition of a specifically world-societal form of violence (original) (raw)

Introduction: On Conflict and Violence

Studia Phaenomenologica, 2019

The premise of the present issue of Studia Phænomenologica is that phenomenology, by virtue of its being anchored in the concrete experience of subjectivity, of its specific conceptual endeavour and descriptive approach, has a unique theoretical potential not only to understand how the various aspects of violence are articulated with fundamental existential structures, but also to bring to light the intertwined meanings of the phenomenon of violence. In particular, the present issue is engaged in the task of capturing the complexity of the experience of violence by criss-crossing phenomenological perspectives on intersubjectivity (e.g., the problem of the hostile other, understood as an adversarial alterity), affectivity (e.g., the emergence of irritation, anger, wrath, and rage as a condition for conflict), and embodiment (e.g., the problem of vulnerability and of the infliction of pain intended by those involved in the factical situation of violence, having murder, the ultimate violence, as a limit). Another major reflection at stake is to consider how these structures of the phenomenon of violence are modalized according to the essential possibilities of spatiality and temporality, either by coming to the fore, or by fading, or by changing their configuration. In this case, it is only the description of the variations of the phenomenon of violence as a whole that can indeed reveal the modifications of its fundamental structures.

War and the changing forms of violence

This paper asks how to understand the relationship between symbolism and violence. The issue is tentatively accounted for by proposing two analytically distinguishable ways in which violence relates to symbolism: 'symbolic domination' and 'symbolic violence'. The paper discusses the first in relation to border crossing as a common practice among travelers world wide. It then moves on to looking at how symbolic violence may operate as a more covert but nevertheless influential part of the geopolitical world ordering. By way of concluding the paper briefly discusses the ramifications of these forms of symbolic power when the geopolitical exception is becoming the norm.

Neutral metamorphoses of technical violence

International Review of Sociology

There is a dimension of violence internal to the functioning logic of technical systems and within the transparency of the instrumental vision of technology. Yet it is one of the centres of rotation of the mobile geography of global violence. This article aims to highlight this centre of mobilization of contemporary violence by identifying the neutral character of technical violence. Technical neutrality, being an instrumental field of operation, qualifies only on the basis of the qualities of meaning that move the action of violent subjects, be they individual or collective. In fact, each violent subject uses technologies to enhance the act of violation in order to impose a sense of his order of reality in the victim's sphere of life. However, it is precisely by serving the various ends that qualify the omnipotence of the violent subject that the technique systematically becomes their master. This reversal of the meansends relationship is one of the accelerating factors of the innovation cycles of the forms of technical violence towards increasingly sophisticated and pervasive degrees. Moving in this problematic context, the article aims to understand how the technical metamorphoses of violence reconfigure the contemporary social bond as well as human identity.

The Temporality of Violence: Destruction, Dissolution and the Construction of Sense

Violence and Meaning, 2019

Violence permeates the temporality of human existence and in so doing is structured in relation to experience. Violence expresses memories of past wrongs, aims at hoped for futures, and indulges in cruelty in the present. Yet violence threatens to undermine the very structures of experience: closing off the future; failing to allow the past to pass perpetuating cycles of revenge; collapsing sense into destructive orgy of the present. Experience in the mode of hope, memory, and perception, in its directedness towards future, past, and present, structures those modes of justification which attempt to make violence meaningful, while violence threatens the very possibility of experience. Violence expresses a destructive force which has no limits in and of itself. The logic of violence is one of continual destruction which ends only through an exhaustion of the instruments of violence or by some factors outside of itself. This is so because violence as distinct from its discourses of justification has a fundamentally atemporal logic: its movement is in opposition to the three modi of temporal motion striving towards the to come, recalling the having passed, tarrying with the passing. Violence targets that very movement of passing, is deadly in manifesting the destruction of units of sense and meaning, by making impossible the temporal syntheses which allow such units to be. But violence in this way expresses non-being in time which resides not (as classically supposed) in the not yet and no more, but rather in a present which divides past and future, threatening a totally immanent present without temporal transcendence. That present is a moment of destruction and dissolution, which calls for the constructive restoration of sense through the constitution of temporal continuity. As such the constitution of meaning is a constant creative movement (both active and passive with respect to the agency of the self) in tension with violence as that destructive force which gives place for the creative movement of temporal meaning constitution. The world of sense, then, is continually formed through the re-figuring of meaning made necessary by violence yet endangered always by a logic of violence which is destructive of sense and of the temporal constitution of experience and world.

Violence, Space, and the Political - CFP - Long Version, Dec 17

Through this conference we aim to explore the imbrications of violence, space, and the political. Given that our present conjuncture is one constituted by innumerable sites of exclusion, oppression, and resistance(s), such an interrogation is both crucial and potentially productive in rethinking questions of power and radical politics. In this zeitgeist the contingency of hitherto relatively stable configurations of power has been rendered visible through the failing allure of liberal democratic politics. The dislocations conjured by the ‘spectral dance of capital’ (Žižek, 2008) have rift a void from which a plurality of discourses have proliferated that seek to address this moment of crises by either caging/bounding or expanding the social. That is, at stake in many contemporary political projects currently gaining traction is the redrawing of frontiers, bounds of inclusion and exclusion – from international borders to the remaking of frontiers within existing polities. Violence/antagonism, in various iterations, is central to the (re)inscription of these frontiers (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). Not only evident in ostensibly bellicose projects that seek to defend or contest regimes of power through violent struggle; violence is imbricated in an other, perhaps more foundational or ‘originary’ sense (Arendt, 1963; Derrida, 1990). The redrawing of boundaries reconfigures differential relationships of power and propriety, which designate who has the right to speak sovereignly in a given space, who is a worthy and noble victim, and who is not (Butler, 2009). Boundaries determine who is differentially exposed to systemic, symbolic and subjective forms of violence. By keeping the question of the spatial in view, both its making and breaking, we keep a focus on the concrete practices of disruption, as well as the democratic potentialities of space (Dikeç, 2015). Then the new possible modes of liberation, domination, and property, but also the various spatial-political imaginaries that guide them are rendered intelligible.

The Mosaic of Violence – An Introduction

Civil Wars, 2009

Violence leads to destruction and, especially in form of collective violence and war, unfolds enormous destructive capacities, bringing about distress, hardship, suffering and horror. Violence destroys social relations, economic opportunities and political institutions. Widespread violence furthermore hints at profound shortcomings of the states affected: their incapability to monopolise the means and use of violence and to provide security for their citizens. These aspects commonly associated with collective violence have contributed to the general assumption that violence belongs mainly into the realm of failure, lack of order and chaos.

The many faces of violence (FWF P 20300)

The Many Faces of Violence: Toward an Integrative Phenomenological Conception Events of extreme violence, such as suicide-attacks, 9/11, or the “return of a new archaic violence,” have recently renewed attention about physical violence. Interestingly, there has also been a reappearance of concern about social, cultural, and structural violence. However, while all these forms have been subject to special studies, interdisciplinary research is still hampered by the lack of a unifying approach. What is missing is a paradigm that allows us to think these forms of violence as aspects of a unified phenomenon. To resolve this deficit and elaborate an integrative conception of violence, this project will use the phenomenological method. Generally viewed, phenomenology studies how we make sense of the world. Our working hypothesis holds that violence is destructive of sense and, on a more foundational level, our bodily capacities of sense-making. We see embodiment as a multi-level phenomenon, beginning with the physical “I can” and proceeding through various levels of cultural, social, and political practices. Given this correlation, we will analyze how violence destroys the ways we make sense of the world and ourselves according to our traditions and institutions. Because such sense structures delineate our world by forming a series of dependencies, we can be exposed to indirect violence, i.e. symbolic, cultural, and structural. To unfold the implications of our research, we will examine specific examples of cultural and political collapse, so-called “cultures of violence,” “coercive environments,” as well as structures of multiple social exclusion. In this context, we will also address the poietic function of violence and analyze how it is used for the formation and expression of identity, involving both individuals and collectivities. As to the traditional equation of sovereignty and freedom, expressions of identity imply determinations of the other in terms of irrationality and threat that can be used to justify one’s own violence. In uncovering this circle of violence and counter-violence, we, finally, seek to rethink our political categories beyond the logic of confrontation that rests upon essentialist misconceptions of our communal being. To construct an integrative approach to violence, our research will present a non-subjectivist phenomenology that enables us to see how violence is destructive of sense. In testing this hypothesis on historic, sociological and anthropological materials, we will ground our research empirically. Thus, we will, in the last analysis, elaborate a methodology for interdisciplinary research that will foster a deeper understanding of the many interrelated faces of violence. Project underwritten by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF P 20300) (1.11.2007 - 30.06.2011)