“Si quieres saber del agua, no le preguntes al pez”. Epistemología de segundo orden en el estudio de la violencia

Abstract

The claim that violence is a phenomenon suitable for the objective approach is highly questionable. In this article, some aspects underlying the more classical approa­ches about such topic will be indicated, and their intrinsic violent potential will be emphasized. The core of the ideas that aims to raise the objectivist epistemology leads to a symbolic violence entrenched in the principle of the excluded middle. Consequently, efforts to make violence a topic of objective research end up becoming a flagrant feedback of the same violence they intend to observe (causing a kind of “epistemic iatrogenesis”). However, in contrast to the ossified objectivist position (associated with the empirical-positivist tradition), a socio-constructionist epistemological approach will be explored. It focuses on violence as a complex reality, by framing it within a “Second-Order Research” (or “Epistemology of Observing Systems”).