Aspects of Violence: A Critical Theory PDF
Preview Aspects of Violence: A Critical Theory
Aspects of Violence Cultural Criminology Series editor: Mike Presdee, Sometime Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of Kent, UK Titles include: Ruth Penfold-Mounce CELEBRITY CULTURE AND CRIME The Joy of Trangression Willem Schinkel ASPECTS OF VIOLENCE A Critical Theory Cultural Criminology Series Standing Order ISBN 978-0-230--53558-9 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Aspects of Violence A Critical Theory Willem Schinkel Erasmus University of Rotterdam, The Netherlands ppaallggraarvvee mmaaccmmiillllaann © Willem Schinkel 2010 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009978-0-230-57719-0 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin's Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-36695-8 ISBN 978-0-230-25134-2 (eBook) 001 10.1057/9780230251342 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Transferred to Digital 2011 Contents List of Illustrations vi Acknowledgements vii Part I The Concept and Observation of Violence 1 Introduction: Aspects of Violence 3 2 The Definition of Violence - Part I 16 3 The Definition of Violence - Part II 45 4 From Critique of Violence to Autotelic Violence: Rereading Walter Benjamin 84 Part II Violence in Social Science 5 The Will to Violence 107 6 The Continuation of Violence by Other Means: Terrorism 136 7 A Note on Causes of High School Violence 154 8 The Trias Violentiae 165 9 For a New Social Science of Violence 203 Notes 230 References 232 Index 245 v List of Illustrations 7.1 Dylan Klebold's last notebook entry 156 7.2 Eric Harris' itinerary, written on a page in his daily planner 158 8.1 The Trias Violentiae 192 8.2 Conventional analyses of violence 193 vi Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people for their advice/help/support in writing this book. Zygmunt Bauman, Marguerite van den Berg, Godfried Engbersen, the guys from F and C-block, Philippa Grand, Mart-Jan de Jong, Rudi Laermans, Olivia Middleton, Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens, Mirko Noordegraaf, Rutger Noordegraaf, Thomas Noordegraaf, Casper Noordegraaf, Jeroen Noordegraaf, Oma Geerse, Oma Schinkel, Mike Presdee, Sonja Pruimers, Anders Schinkel, Eva Schinkel, Els Schinkel, Kees Schinkel, Jeroen van Tilborg, Charlotte van Tilborg, Debby Vermeulen, Raymond Visser, Annemieke Vreugdenhil and LOlc Wacquant. vii Part I The Concept and Observation of Violence 1 Introduction: Aspects of Violence Introduction: Writing about violence There are two ways of expressing the difficulties inherent in writing about violence. These two perspectives come together in the statement that violence has a tendency of being misrecognized. On the one hand, this is taken to mean that violence hides itself from any interpretative act towards it, that it is an essential feature of violence to be ill-recognizable. On the other hand, it is said that there is a tendency to misrecognize violence as such, because there exists an illusio that functions as a cover-up for violence. These posi tions are widely different, and yet they have in common the idea - the intuition if such is allowed - that violence is a slippery object, covering a plethora of things, actions mostly, being ill-definable (d. Stanko, 2003). It is an object which escapes objectification. As Bauman (1995: 139) has said: 'There must be something about violence that makes it elude all conceptual nets.' If one finds paradigm-centred nomenclature enlightening, one might be satisfied here with an opposition along the lines of phenomenology ver sus structuralism. Thus, in sociology, debate may centre on the proper rec ognition of violence, on its 'immediate understanding' versus its structural antecedents and mythological or ideological masks. In philosophy, another issue appears to be at stake. The problem of the definition of violence can here, equally roughly, be divided into an essentialist and an anti-essentialist stance, or a conceptual nominalist and a realist stance. Is violence to be regarded as a Wittgensteinian family concept or as an Aristotelian form? These two debates - the one in sociology, the other in philosophy - are of course contaminated with each other. No understanding of violence will be propagated without a philosophical stance concerning the question what violence is. And no ideological masks are uncovered without debunking both commonsensical and philosophical essentialist notions of violence. Yet the reality of violence shows no respect for academic wobbling; it disregards the analytic dissection of its conceptual use and the causal dissection of its perpetrators. If a further claim is to be made, it is that no one perspective 3
The list of books you might like
