A Contribution Towards a Critical Theory of School Shootings

Abstract

The paper comments on school shootings from a socio-critical perspective and offers provocative conclusions on the reasons for young people to go on killing sprees. In order to achieve this, the author applies the psychological theory of the “abstract free will” and analyzes how a modern individual’s consciousness must be shaped to commit lethal violence at school. It transpires that individuals, who deal psychologically with the requirements of the capitalistic society, apply the criterion of successful decency to their material and social efforts. Even though this is common among modern individuals and accompanied by adequate psychological and moral “techniques,” some radicalize the ideal they have constructed of themselves and the society they live in. How many times have we heard the words “senseless shooting,” “senseless violence,” or “senseless killing” in reference to the various school shootings that have taken place in recent years? Quite the contrary is argued in this text and that the actions in Columbine, Erfurt, or at Virginia Tech make sense in the light of a critical analysis of how a private individual’s consciousness is shaped in a society based on competition and the rule of law as its major organizational principles. The present analysis therefore exceeds the limitations of the existing literature on school shootings, which merely describes the phenomenon and is thus not able to provide a thorough explanation (for a literature review see Bondu & Scheithauer 2011). There, the unspecified listing of factors that are thought to contribute to the occurrence of such rampages defies the formation of a convincing theory. In recent years the frequency of school shootings has increased. A fact that forces us to consider the rationale of these terrible events that leave behind dead people and a stunned public. Even though killing rampages don’t make sense to us immediately, after digging a little deeper and putting the puzzle pieces together, it appers that school shootings not only follow their own rationale but also offer grounds for severe social criticism.