Violence: a working definition
In response to my last post, Andrew offers what I a think is a good working definition for violence.
For me, and I suspect for others, violence is most easily described the way the concept Force is described bythe formula “force equals mass times acceleration.” Another way to state this is to say “force is the quantity that, when applied to a mass, produces acceleration.” In this way, I think it is both simplest and most comprehensive to describe violence by its effect rather than its myriad causes.
Violence is that property which, when applied to an entity (be it an entelechy, social structure, or any other kind of object) through some action or process, produces injury or damage.
I agree. Violence — be it subjective, systemic, or symbolic — is that which causes injury or damage to, and demands the subjugation of, a particular autonomous entity.
I would also want to draw attention to the fact that this definition allows some emphases that have — at least in Christian theology — often been ignored. Here I am thinking particularly of the violence of language and the violence of ideology especially as it pertains to certain Christian concepts (e.g. evangelism, missiology, nonviolence, etc.). It would seem, if we are to accept this definition, that insisting upon ideological and linguistic conformity — as these ideas at lest in there more traditional forms tend to do — would be to do violence to the other and thus undermine the Christian project altogether.
I say this only to return to another question: I wonder, can these concepts be freed from ideology and re-appropriated in such a way that does not perpetuate violence against seemingly potential ideological converts? I want to suggest that somehow they can. This will be something I explore in another post. For now I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
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In reading the definition, I found myself backing off a little and asked why? And my first thought was the it's missing the word dignity. And here's why.
Damage isn't necessarily bad. When Jesus cleared the temples, it can be argued that he was doing the money changers a favor by pushing them out of their own destructive behavior even though that was not the essential point. If I damage someones stuff and it was that stuff that was keeping them from restoration, it doesn't seem to be violence.
But when I add the word dignity the your definition it gives it a very distinct meaning. Damage and injury are now deeper issues.
Just my thoughts.
jonathanbrink
8 Apr 09 at 4:14 pm
This is interesting.
Part of me wants to completely agree with you. Of course dignity is lacking! To do violence toward another person must involve an infringement upon, or outright displacement of, that person's dignity as a human being.
But on the other hand when I think about Jesus's incident in the Temple, I want to maintain that it was in some sense 'violent' (and I'm using the scare quotes here because it obviously wouldn't be the same type of dignity-removing violence you speak of). When I think about the whole Temple system, the busyness that was involved and the high number of people present (especially around Passover time) and then think about what it might have felt like for someone to enter into that normalcy and essentially turn it on its head, I can help but think that it would feel like a violent act…at the very least a jarring and abrasive act. Somehow it seems that calling what Jesus did the Temple as 'not being violent' removes some of its harshness.
I don't know. It also makes me uneasy. To say that Jesus did something 'violent' almost seems violent in itself. But again, I would want to draw stark contrast between that and the erasure of a person's dignity. The violence (if it can even be called that) that Jesus does in the Temple certainly doesn't hurt anyone, it simply exposes and unmasks and oppressive and violent (!) system.
I want to say more about this, but I'm just thinking 'out loud' here. I feel like I should be able to draw a clearer contrast. If not, it might be best to drop that direction altogether. I don't know. What do you think?
Blake Huggins
9 Apr 09 at 3:32 am
[...] of reading through Žižek’s latest book on violence and relating it to my thoughts in the previous posts. But I’ve been super busy and had some trouble getting my hands on the book (trouble [...]
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