Modern Violence Research Articles

Contested Understandings of Violence: Refiguring Modern and Postmodern Perspectives

There are numerous conceptions of violence today, such as physical, psychological, emotional, structural, and epistemic. The question of which social phenomena are to be described as violence is itself a matter of furious dispute. In social theory, there is a widespread tendency to distinguish between ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’ conceptions of violence. In this scheme, modern violence is primarily physical, while postmodern violence takes places across a broad spectrum of forms. The paper questions this binary. The co-occurrence and conflict between these forms of violence leads to a third form, which I call refigured violence. The refiguration of violence can be observed in three developments, which are mediatisation, polycontexturalisation, and translocalisation. I provide one illustration of these considerations with the example of so-called shock sites on the internet. In so doing, I emphasise that the sociology of knowledge can provide a valuable perspective for making sense of contemporary discourses about violence in all their complexity.

Water and fluidity in İz Öztat’s heterochronic imaginaries in the aftermath of genocide

Between the years 2013–2016, the artist İz Öztat created four distinct bodies of work, all of which engaged aspects of water. This period was marked in Turkey by the heightened tensions around the neoliberal (re)distribution of public space and public resources, which escalated in the aftermath of the Gezi Park Protests of 2013. In this article, the author argues that, beyond its immediate critique of contemporary capitalist appropriation, Öztat’s engagement with water builds relations across time, space, and species to recall histories of the Armenian Genocide, challenging the denials of official historiography. By tapping into the linguistic, cultural, and material imaginaries of water, and learning from the present-day water protection movements, Öztat engages the diverse histories carried across waterways. Water becomes a nexus through which the artist locates and articulates the physical and epistemic violence of modernity, particularly as it indexes community, conscience, and ecology from the late 19th century to the present.

From Scapegoating to the Culture of Cruelty: (Mis)Managing Mimetic Desire and Violence in Late Modernity

Due to the ‘civilizing process’ (Elias), the overall level of violence is decreasing; yet its transforming patterns persist. The article aims at examining the contemporary structures and mechanisms responsible for violence control, while also exploring the newly emerging, naturalized patterns of cruelty. Firstly, René Girard’s mimetic theory is overviewed: while in archaic societies, mimetic crisis is controlled by sacrificial rites, modernization reconfigures this paradigm. Secondly, these transformations are mapped: mimetic desire is channelled into the market processes, while mimetic crisis is managed by the state monopolizing violence. Thirdly, the structural transformations of late modernity upsetting the fragile balance of state and market are analysed: secular scapegoating becomes part of the political toolset, while the private sphere is overwhelmed by undetectable new forms of hurting and self-harming. As a culture of cruelty is naturalized, mimetic crisis becomes a continuous threat, which generates a need for the functional equivalents of sacrificial violence control.

Difficult Opacity: On Reading Difference

This article argues for a redefinition of difficulty in relation to the inextricable violence of modernity and examines the consecutive challenge to notions of understanding and interpretation — of a text, of language or of the other — that this repositioning brings. To this end, the article offers a nuanced rereading of Steiner’s canonical fourfold categorization of difficulty, in dialogue with, first, Édouard Glissant’s opacity and, second, Jonathan Pugh and David Chandler’s theorizations of ‘abyssal thought’, an approach emerging from Caribbean and critical Black studies, exploring the key challenge it poses to forging an unmasterful, after Julietta Singh, comparative literary practice. With an equal attention to the theoretical and pedagogical dimensions of reading difficulty, the article emphasizes the importance of the accretive and embodied nature of the reading process and offers a repositioning of textual difficulty, as a meeting site of opacities, and a reformulation of a difficult, unmasterful reading practice, after catastrophe and with others.

A Doxological Response to the Problem of Disenchantment

Abstract In recent years, much attention has been paid to the problem of disenchantment, perhaps most notably in the extensive work of Charles Taylor. This article examines the disenchantment narrative as formulated by Max Weber and appropriated by Charles Taylor, and augment this with the perspective offered by Jason Josephson-Storm and other interlocutors, to generate a reading suitable for theological use. It suggests ways in which the human person and society might be affected by disenchantment. Finally, it explores means by which prayer might be used as a resource for dealing with the causes and symptoms of disenchantment, following the example of Andrew Prevot’s careful exploration of prayer as a source of Christian thought. Prevot’s concept of doxological theology (‘thinking prayer’) is particularly useful for resisting what he identifies as three crises of modernity: secularity, the fate of Western metaphysics, and socioeconomic and identity-based violence. This describes the imperative for studies in this area: insofar as the process of disenchantment contributes to the systematic violence and dehumanisation inherent in modernity, it is vital to explore the mechanics of that process and possible tools to combat it.

Arab Region Social Protection Systems: Research and Policy Design Challenges

This article examines the challenges and opportunities that exist for the production of knowledge and the design of evidence-based policies which aim at achieving more equitable and inclusive social protection systems in the Arab region. The article builds on the experiences of researchers and activists following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and considers the challenges they faced. It examines the root causes of those challenges as related to data collection, analysis, and interpretation; the adopted research methods and approaches; the typology of researchers, research subjects, practitioners, and activists; the research outputs and the policy recommendations ensuing from them; and the policy spaces encountered when lobbying for the necessary reforms. The article proposes solutions to extend the struggle against the ‘violence of modernity’ when trying to influence policymaking, suggesting a departure from normative forms of knowledge production and advocacy on socioeconomic rights in the Arab region to more homegrown, engaged forms.

Fetishization of Christian Martyrdom

Martyrdom in Christianity has been extensively researched, but this study examines its fetishization within modern violence, such as school shootings. This paper examines Christians' fantasy of martyrdom in the 1990s, and the cultural influence of Columbine shooting victims Rachel Scott and Cassie Bernall. The idealization of sacrifice and becoming a martyr post-death concerning faith maintains significant cultural relevance and negative implications throughout history. I found that martyrdom within Columbine has created a shift within teen Christian culture, especially with fantasies of violence and sacrifice. This research contributes to the extant research on the intersections of religion and violence.

Poetics of Propensity in Sinophone Fiction An Analysis of Lai Hsiang-yin and Lee Wai Yi’s Ghost Narrative

This study aims to analyse two novellas, namely “Rain Tree” (“Yudou shu” 雨豆樹) by Lai Hsiang-yin 賴香吟 (2017) from Taiwan and “Away” (“Li” 離) by Lee Wai Yi 李維怡 (2018) from Hong Kong. This article attempts to understand how non-corporeal or non-representational ghost narratives become a mobile strategy for re-investigating mainstream narratives or the violence of modernity. Through the ‘de-temporalisation’ of the city and the momentary folding of time and space, Rain Tree reconsiders the meaning of Taiwan as a superior signifier. Away endeavours to reveal the ghostly nature underneath the instrumental rationality of Hong Kong, tapping into the fluctuating heterogeneity of modernity. This study also draws on Sinophone articulation to juxtapose two texts belonging to Taiwan and Hong Kong, thus highlighting how ghosts become a poetics of ‘propensity’ (shi 勢) within the Sinophone framework. These spectral entities transcend the confines of conventional categorisations and challenge the fixedness of ‘roots’. This strategy does not follow the logic of psychoanalytic selfhood or postcolonial grand narratives, but rather a fluid nature and potential.

After the end of the world? Rethinking temporalities of critique and affirmation in the Anthropocene

The contemporary era of the Anthropocene has undermined linear views of progress and development. In its wake, alternative futural imaginaries have become central to critical and decolonial accounts in the discipline of International Relations. We argue that radical imaginaries of alternative non-modern futures risk failing to account fully for the ongoing violence and exclusions of modernity. We identify two strands of Anthropocene work: firstly, the critique posed by ‘posthuman’ ontologies of relation and entanglement, seeking new modes of governance in the face of climate catastrophe; secondly, decolonial affirmative ways of being, drawn from the experiences of the dispossessed in modernity. Both these approaches to futurity seek to move beyond a modernist world to new futures. In our argument, we set out an alternative perspective, the Black Horizon, which rejects the call to imagine new productive futures, and instead focusses on the deconstruction of modernity, in search of ending the current world of antiblackness, rather than critique or affirm its existence. Thus, even though contemporary critical and decolonial approaches stress the attention to ontology, alterity and difference, in their attempts to ground alternative worlds in existing practices or knowledges, they offer salvific alternatives, whilst leaving the foundations of our current world intact.

Can fiction lead to prosocial behaviour? Exclusion, violence, empathy, and literature in early modernity

ABSTRACT In this short essay, I want to address the relationship between positivity and negativity in affect theories and literary analysis by focusing on the connection between empathy and literature in early modernity, a period when affect theories emerge robustly and are articulated in treatises such as De anima et vita (1538) by Juan Luis Vives (1492–1590) or Nueva Filosofía (1587) by Oliva de Sabuco (1562–1626?). We begin with the proposition that fictional narratives may move us to care for others and help them. Indeed, the idea that fiction can make us more empathetic and, thus, turn us into better human beings is a powerful hypothesis that has been the subject of a great number of discussions and publications. However, as we continue to investigate whether and how fiction may lead to prosocial behaviour via empathic responses and what are the narrative strategies that authors may employ to elicit empathy in readers, we need to acknowledge that: (1) the connection between empathy and prosocial behaviour, known as the empathy–altruism hypothesis, is still a controversial one and more empirical evidence is needed to back it up; and (2) there is no direct correspondence between empathic authorial intention and audience reception, a phenomenon that can be discussed through notions such as failed empathy or empathic inaccuracy.

The principle of prohibition of violence in the family: implementation of European and international standards in the conditions of martial law in Ukraine

The article carries out a systematic analysis of the principle of prohibition of family violence in terms of the implementation of European and international standards in the conditions of martial law in Ukraine. The essence of the principle of prohibition of violence in the family is analyzed, taking into account the provisions of the UN Declaration on the Eradication of Violence against Women, the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Elimination of Violence against Women, the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, adopted in Maputo ( Mozambique) on July 11, 2003 and the Istanbul Convention. The provisions of the EU Strategy on gender equality for 2020-2025 have been studied. Attention was drawn to the need to implement comprehensive measures to prevent and combat gender-based violence. Particular attention is paid to the Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence, proposed for adoption in 2022.
 The consequences of last year's ratification by Ukraine of the Convention of the Council of Europe on the prevention of violence against women and domestic violence and the fight against these phenomena have been established with significant caveats.
 The practice of implementing obligations to implement the mechanism for the prevention of domestic violence has been clarified, including through the analysis of the activities of various services in Ukraine, as well as national and regional statistics on domestic violence.
 It is substantiated that Ukraine is not responsible for the perpetration of domestic violence in the occupied and non-controlled territories. At the same time, it is responsible for the effectiveness of the principle of combating domestic violence in conditions of war in controlled territories. In view of the statistical data, the deterioration of the situation, taking into account the need to implement European approaches, it is proposed to make changes to the Law "On Prevention and Combating Domestic Violence" and to provide for such a form of modern violence as cyber violence and establish responsibility for it.

Homicide in early modern Bologna: a prepositional cartography

AbstractIn early modern violence, location mattered, and where something took place communicated much to early modern urban residents about the people involved, the significance of the act and the likely judicial repercussions for their communities. This article uses GIS to trace the locations of homicides in early modern Bologna, Italy, with a ‘prepositional cartography’ that translates early modern Italian spatial mentalities into modern GIS analyses. Mapping homicides reveals much about their meaning and significance. From private buildings, streets and churches, early modern killers spoke a language of space to their audience.

War, from the South

Abstract In South Lebanon, like other places across the Global South, war is experienced as an enduring condition that makes worlds even as it destroys them—worlds that continue to be lively, if also deadly. What theory of war might be adequate to these worlds? This essay shifts the terrain and the terms in which war is grasped by sourcing a theory of war from a resistantly inhabited battlefield of the Global South. Placing war alongside other more normalized sites of modern violence this essay seeks to decolonize theories of war and to bring to light vitalizing ecologies of practice that underwrite resistant life in deadly quarters.

The Present of Nanyo Fantasy as a Healing Space：Desire for Purity in Banana Yoshimoto’s <I>Niji</i>

The Yoshimoto banana of <Niji> depicts “Nanyo” = Tihiti as a medium for healing and recovery. The space could be this medium because it was a place overflowing with purity and primacy. However, due to this desire for purity and primacy, the possibility of otherness = hybridity = uncanniness is castrated in the space. Therefore, the danger of a kind of modern violence is included in <Niji> which talks about pure and beautiful healing and recovery. In addition, Yoshimoto Banana talks about connection with the world based on the assumption of “family” as the basis for restoring “pure me” and “primary me.” However, by setting the unit of “family,” the possibility of “me=subject” who continues to worry about himself, such as Kenzaburo Oe, is eliminated.</br>Of course, this very point may be the possibility of “new literature,” and the background of the times in which individuals in the 2000s who cannot be the subject are being expressed. However, in reverse, it can also be read as a text that shows the danger that an individual in the impossibility of subjectivity in the 2000s can desire purity and unity and exclude and loathe “others.”

The African Nationalist Idea of Africa

This paper probes the impact of colonial designs in the fabrication of native subjectivities, which eventuated in toxic political identities that would later undermine the post-colonial nationalist project. African history was shaped by three discursive periods: pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial. The colonisation period deformed, distorted and adulterated Africa’s pre-colonial cultural landscape—its sense of selfhood. African nationalism was a response to this ontologically debilitated condition of African personhood resulting from the violence of self-serving European colonial modernity, which created a structured subjugation of the African ‘other.’ African colonial elites at once defined and epitomised various forms of African nationalism against European incursion. However, these African modernisers failed to grasp the historicity of such enduringly baneful identity politics, and were thereby often themselves cast into the vortex of social contradictions reflective of this history. Mamdani made this observation when he stated that in kick-starting the nation-building project after independence, post-colonial elites turned their backs on the history of colonialism and thus on their own history.Instead, they modelled their political imagination on the modern European state, the result being the nationalist dream was imposed on the reality of colonially imposed fragmentation, leading to new rounds of nation-building by ethnic cleansing. Consequently, African nationalism has invariably spread across large swathes of postcolonial Africa as it degenerated into odious ethnonationalism and chauvinism. Only through a deeper historical understanding of these colonial processes of African political identification can an we begin to understand how this once glorious African nationalism regressed into a dystopian one. This article draws on history to dissect this legacy of subjective forms of African self-understanding.

Modern western concepts of military violence

The state of the military and political situation around Belarus is characterized by the dynamism of negative processes. Factors showing a high degree of military activity of geopolitical centers of power have been noted. The probability of using military force and other non-military measures against the state obliges us to continuously analyze the technologies of military violence. A regular trend of violence is revealed - the change of war paradigms from classical to non-classical. The face of modern military conflicts encompasses all spheres of social life. The main features of U. S. military policy after the end of the “cold war” are demonstrated. The American classification of the states of the world, according to which the U. S. builds relationships in the interests of geopolitical dominance, is considered. They use the technology of non-classical warfare, in which a significant role is given to information, political, diplomatic, ideological, economic and other resources of subordination of the opposite side to its will. The basic concepts of non-classical warfare and their characteristics are considered. Particular attention is paid to hybrid warfare. In military conflicts the most important place is given to information wars. The modern stage is characterized as conscientious warfare. Signs of the transition from “mental warfare” to “noosphere war” are revealed, when the mind is aimed at the destruction and subordination of the will of entire states for egoistic purposes to the will of the “world leader”. Western strategists actively use the technology of “gray zone” balancing between war and peace. It is concluded that the concepts of non-classical warfare play a significant role in modern military violence. Given the increase in military violence in the world, it is important to prioritize the military sphere of national security.

Ante-Oedipus

Abstract This article argues that Freud’s account of binary sexual difference, articulated in the Oedipus complex, is conditioned by a history of racial capitalism. Turning to the foundational work of Hortense Spillers on gender and Atlantic race slavery, this article proposes that dominant models of binary gender are ineluctably racialized, created by the property regimes and systemic sexual violence of colonial modernity that emerged in the Atlantic World of the eighteenth century—a space defined by the structures of labor, race, sexuality, and capital accumulation that developed in and around the first factories of the modern world, namely, the sugar plantations of the colonial Caribbean. The article links Freud’s own economic and intellectual history to the production of capital and the theft of land and labor in the Caribbean by way of the central European trade in textiles and global cotton production. Examining a series of family portraits, the article locates the eclipsed yet central force of Black women’s productive and socially reproductive work extracted for the creation of white, heteropatriarchal reproduction and property accumulation.

Global History of Early Modern Violence ed. by Erica Charters et al.

Global History of Early Modern Violence ed. by Erica Charters et al.

Jonathan Swift and the Nature of Modern Violence

Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels have been read as participating in a wider debate, the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, and as critiques of the rise of the New Sciences and the study of the "Book of Nature." The essay argues that Swift viewed the Modern preoccupation with nature as emblematic of the desire to return to a pre-cultural state of chaos and violence. Far from being an attempt to step into nature as a way of arriving at empirical truth, thus, these works hint at Swift's notion that the Modern return to nature represented dissolution of human culture. In addition, the essay discusses the afterlife of Swift's notions of the Modern as inherently anti-cultural through the work of Great War poet David Jones and his postwar masterpiece In Parenthesis.

Epistemological resistances and the search for alternatives to modernity in intellectual history

The violence of modernity has led to epistemological resistances around the world and the search for alternative ways of reconstructing philosophy. Among the Frankfurt School and early Kyoto School thinkers, for instance, the problem of modernity is framed as an excess of objective rationality, but among the decolonial thinkers of Latin America, the problem is conceptualized as the very myth of modernity itself that has legitimized the colonization and exclusion of non-Europeans. In the search for alternatives modernities, the Kyoto School and Latin American philosophy agree to a vision of inter-civilizational dialogue, which amounts to an engagement of alterity or differences, whereas with the Frankfurt School, albeit struggles to find consensus on how to overcome modernity, aims to merely preclude the problem of reproducing the impulses toward the domination of oneself and others. Nonetheless, all these paradigms have a theoretical point of convergence: that is, since we are all participants of modernity, we are both victims and executioners of its violence, and thus compelled to negate it. This article will discuss how the violence of modernity is experienced, theorized, and then challenged around different continents in order to make visible not just how the violence of modernity is reproduced in different ways but to force ourselves to engage in self-critique in the pursuit to make explicit our own assumptions that repeats the violence of modernity.