Violence, Civilization and the State

2005

An exploration of the often unrecognized violent foundations of modern nations This extraordinary collection of essays recasts prevailing understandings of the role of violence in the formation of the modern world. By illuminating the links between exceptional ruptures and the routine maintenance of social order, the collection expands and redefines our understanding of political violence. By means of a combination of detailed historical studies and imaginative reflection, this book explores the often unrecognized violent foundations of modern nations. Focusing on the relations between the state and the domestic order, it directs attention to contests over the establishment and representation of meanings, and addresses the impact of state-centered categories and narratives on the organization and collective remembering of violence. The essays cover a wide range of regions, time periods, and processes, including the Middle East, South Asia, Latin America, the United States, and Europ...

2020

A history without violence would, for us at least, be unrecognizable as history. Yet, paradoxically, violence as phenomenon appears to exist apart from the history in which it is omnipresent. Violence seems, almost unconsciously, to found the historical imagination itself and at the same time to exist apart from it, as a moral or metaphysical absolute. In the final analysis this no doubt has to do with the impossibility of disassociating the idea of violence from that of death as physical annihilation. Taken to its extreme, violence could end history by destroying virtually all historical agents. Indeed, it must rank as one of the great historical feats of modernity that is has actualized what was before this merely theoretical possibility and even learned to make us accommodate ourselves to it in our daily lives. Alongside the abstract repugnance it universally merits in the language of official 'values,' violence as means and as sheer adaptation advances at a sure and accelerating pace. Whatever they may convey on the level of official historical sanctions, the stories and images of catastrophic violence-whether of

Politica Y Sociedad, 2013

In this article, I would like to suggest permanencies in the frames of thought in terms of barbarity and civilization in the speeches of perpetrators of serious State violence in Argentina. This research is based on extensive testimonies such as autobiographical accounts (« memoirs ») and non-judiciary interviews, from soldiers and policemen who were active just before and during Argentina's last military dictatorship (1976)(1977)(1978)(1979)(1980)(1981)(1982)(1983) and spoke a posteriori about this past. To carry a necessary glance on the transhistorical and relevant connotations of this notional couple, I will refer to historical works of the political culture approach. At first, through a genetical perspective, two key connotations of the barbarity / civilization dichotomy are located at its time of entry in the political language during the first part of the 19th century, in order to show under which form discourses produced 150 years later in the Argentinian context, are still impregnated from them. Then, specific persistencies of this notional couple are explored, from its moral to its identity-based dimension, when it is assimilated into the worldview of people who regularly transgressed the proscription of murder and torture.

borderlands e-journal, 13.1, 2014

This special issue of borderlands engages with Joseph Pugliese's recently published book, State Violence and the Execution of Law, an important intervention that provides a perceptive and insightful exposition into state violence post 9/11 and the formation of a new geo-political order where 'torture is invariably situated as productive: of truth, knowledge and the prevention of prospective violence and terror ' (2013, p. 1). The originality of State Violence and the Execution of Law lies in the weaving together of poststructuralist critique (Foucault on biopolitics, Derrida on deconstruction) with critical race and whiteness studies, and critical legal theories, to offer a powerful analysis of the military-industrial-security complex that animates and dominates the present. To engage with Pugliese's central concern, the violence of state power, we invited senior academics working in different yet related geopolitical contexts to dialogue, comment on, grapple with or draw on points of connection with their own work. Each of these scholars, who have been meticulous in mapping violence in the context of their work, has generously agreed to speak to the concerns of the book. These contributors include Nadera Shalhoub

Crime, Histoire & Sociétés, 2002

Max Weber defines the state as the holder of the monopoly of the legitimate use of force over a given territory and he adds that this monopoly is only possible because those who are subject to the authority of the state, to some extent accept it or consent to it. I think that this definition effectively captures the essential of what constitutes the modern state – a state which I believe is in a process of radical transformation – but I propose one modification to the wording of this definition: the modern state is the holder of the monopoly of legitimate violence. I prefer 'legitimate violence' to 'the legitimate use of force' because it indicates more clearly that between legitimate and illegitimate violence, the only difference is that it is legitimate, in both cases what we are dealing with is violence. Max Weber's wording suggests that there is between the 'legitimate coercive force' of the state and illegitimate violence a difference in nature, as if 'coercive force' was something radically different from violence. This is not to say of course that legitimacy is simply a sham, an illusion or a lie, its effects as we will see are very real. Further, the word 'use' , used by Weber, suggests rationality in the state's recourse to force, 'the monopoly of legitimate violence' implies no such connotation (nor does it exclude it). Finally, the modified formulation also aims to draw our attention to the fact that violence and legitimacy are intimately linked. Legitimacy, political legitimacy, I argue, is inseparable from the ability to make the distinction between good and bad violence and that ability is ultimately rooted in violence itself. A second important aspect of the modern state concerns its function. According to just about every modern political theory the fundamental, in the sense of the primary, function of the state is to protect its citizens against violence, to protect them both from the violence which they may exercise against each other, and from the violence of external enemies. These two aspects of the modern state are closely related for it is through its monopoly of legitimate violence that the state protects its citizens from violence. Further, this function of the state does not only exist in the minds of political theorists and philosophers, a modern state that works, as opposed to a failed state, is one that can effectively impose its monopoly of legitimate violence over its whole territory and thereby protect

2019

Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas (REIS), 2019

Emphasis on simbolic or structural violence and on the nowadays effects of neoliberalism are neglecting an urgent topic of research: exterminist physical violence. We may consider adding exterminist violence to other contemporary violences, as those derived from the neoliberal turn, to fully understand modernity and our own contemporary times. Despite the number of mortal victims in the last two hundred years and the extension of the exterminist violent logic within our times, physical violence seems to have disappeared too easily from the social sciences recent accounts of the present. Reframing Frase's and Thompson's concept of "exterminism" while considering contemporary research on genocides and violence may give birth to a new research agenda: a sociology of exterminism. Palabras clave Exterminismo • Genocidio • Teoría sociológica • Violencia Resumen El énfasis en la violencia simbólica o estructural y en los efectos del neoliberalismo está oscureciendo un tema de investigación urgente: la violencia física exterminista. Podríamos considerar añadir la violencia exterminista a otras violencias contemporáneas, como aquellas derivadas del giro neoliberal, para entender de manera más completa la modernidad y nuestro tiempo. A pesar del número de muertos en los últimos doscientos años y la extensión de la lógica violenta exterminista en nuestro tiempo, la violencia física parece haber desaparecido demasiado fácilmente de los esfuerzos por comprender el presente desde las ciencias sociales. Reconceptualizando el concepto de «exterminismo» de Frase y Thompson y considerando críticamente las investigaciones clásicas y contemporáneas sobre los genocidios y la violencia es posible generar una nueva agenda de investigación: una sociología del exterminismo.