On Violence

This anthology brings together classic perspectives on violence, putting into productive conversation the thought of well-known theorists and activists, including Hannah Arendt, Karl Marx, G. W. F. Hegel, Osama bin Laden, Sigmund Freud, Frantz Fanon, Thomas Hobbes, and Pierre Bourdieu. The volume proceeds from the editors' contention that violence is always historically contingent; it must be contextualized to be understood. They argue that violence is a process rather than a discrete product. It is intrinsic to the human condition, an inescapable fact of life that can be channeled and reckoned with but never completely suppressed. Above all, they seek to illuminate the relationship between action and knowledge about violence, and to examine how one might speak about violence without replicating or perpetuating it. "On Violence" is divided into five sections. Underscoring the connection between violence and economic world orders, the first section explores the dialectical relationship between domination and subordination. The second section brings together pieces by political actors who spoke about the tension between violence and nonviolence - Gandhi, Hitler, and Malcolm X - and critics who have commented on that tension. The third grouping examines institutional faces of violence: familial, legal, and religious, while the fourth reflects on state violence. Turning to issues of representation, the final section includes pieces on the relationship between violence and art, stories, and the media. The editors' introductions to each section highlight the significant theoretical points raised and the interconnections between the essays. Their brief introductions to individual selections provide information about the authors and their particular contributions to theories of violence.

ISBN 082233769X   Pages 592 ISBN13 9780822337690 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Duke University Press   Weight (grammes) 830 Imprint Duke University Press   Published in North Carolina Format Paperback   Height (mm) 235 Publication date 12 Feb 2008   Width (mm) 161 Library of Congress 2007019209   Spine width (mm) 36 DEWEY 303.6   Academic level Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

		General Introduction: Theorizing Violence in the Twenty-first Century		1
Pt. I		The Dialectics of Violence		17
		Phenomenology of Spirit by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel		27
		Anti-Duhring by Friedrich Engels		39
		Capital: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Heinrich Marx		62
		Concerning Violence (The Wretched of the Earth) by Frantz Fanon		78
Pt. II		The Other of Violence		101
		Indian Home Rule by Mohandas K. Gandhi and Hind Swaraj		110
		The Right of Emergency Defense (Mein Kampf) by Adolf Hitler		127
		The Ballot or the Bullet		143
		Selections from the Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci		158
		Keywords; Marxism and Literature by Raymond Williams		180
		Outline of a Theory of Practice by Pierre Bourdieu		188
		Domination and the Arts of Resistance by James C. Scott		199
Pt. III		The Institution of Violence: Three Connections		215
		Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego by Sigmund Freud		226
		Social Control and the Powers of the Weak (Heroes of Their Own Lives) by Linda Gordon		245
		Battered Wives by Del Martin		255
		The Shah Bano Case (Shattering the Myth) by Bruce B. Lawrence		262
		Critique of Violence (Reflections) by Walter Benjamin		268
		Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory by Catharine MacKinnon		286
		Violence and the Word by Robert M. Cover		292
		Human Rights and the New World Order by Chandra Muzaffar		314
		Violence and the Sacred by Rene Girard		334
		More...

"This volume provides a long-needed anthology of major writings related to the subject of violence. The readings include excerpts from classic contributions of Marx and Freud along with pieces by modern thinkers such as Girard and Bourdieu and social activists from Gandhi to bin Laden. The selections are skillfully chosen to address a central theme, that violence always takes place in a context. The readings explore the idea that social, internal, ritualized, and other forms of violence are part of the processes of life and not necessarily anomalies. This is a thoughtful and arresting set of essays on an important topic that will be useful in the classroom and much discussed in the public forum."--Mark Juergensmeyer, University of California, Santa Barbara, author of Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence "Offering an eclectic roster of voices on the subject, this useful reader also raises the suspicion that the history of violence is a red herring. The pervasiveness of violence makes it difficult to distinguish violence from change, or history itself. Violent change requires some kind of ethical marker to make narrative sense as history. Violence is never morally or politically neutral: context is everything."-TLS, 27th Feb 2009

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