State Violence Research Articles

Colectiva Feminista en Construcción

Abstract Colectiva Feminista en Construcción (La Cole) is a Black feminist political organization that emerged in 2014 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This article discusses the ways La Cole’s public discourse around sexism, racism, and homophobia in the archipelago is articulated through the collective’s presence at marches, demonstrations, and on social media. While core membership is small, La Cole has been able to convene collaborators and supporters to organize against the imposition of neoliberal economic and public policies that negatively impact the most dispossessed populations in Puerto Rico, namely Black, poor, queer, and trans women. La Cole has constructed a transnational intersectional feminist pedagogy as a means of political education both within the organization itself and more broadly in Puerto Rico’s public sphere. The organization’s pedagogical strategies include the rewriting of Christmas songs and plenas, an Afro Puerto Rican musical genre, and their Radical Feminist School, a political education space open to nonmembers. Through these pedagogical interventions La Cole simultaneously calls attention to the ways state and structural gender-based violence and femicides, housing precarity, and austerity measures affect the most marginalized sectors of the archipelago while carving out their identity as a decolonial Black feminist political organization.

Journalist in the Terror Scenery: Camille Desmoulins and the Old Cordelier

The article presents a detailed history of Camille Desmoulins' newspaper "The Old Cordelier" in the historical and political context of the Jacobin terror. The content of seven issues of the newspaper is examined, and an attempt is made to reveal Desmoulins' concept of the publication in his dispute with the leader of the extreme left, Hébert, and the all-powerful dictator Robespierre. The first issues of "The Old Cordelier" satisfied Robespierre because they aimed at Hébert and the cult of Reason preached by him. However, gradually the meaning of Desmoulins' texts began to change. The journalist began to write about the shortcomings of the entire machine of state terror and, eventually, inevitably, to criticize Robespierre. Already with his third issue, Desmoulins aroused the discontent of the Jacobin and Cordelier Clubs, from which he was expelled shortly after. The sixth issue was held up by the publisher Desenne, who demanded that the most acute fragments be removed. The seventh issue of the newspaper, which Desmoulins was editing when he was arrested, was published only after Thermidor, and even then with cuts. Desmoulins' political views, which were quite radical at the beginning of the Revolution, underwent a significant evolution against the backdrop of the Terror. In order to influence events, he returned to journalism and began publishing his own newspaper again - an activity he had abandoned when he moved away from publishing the periodical brochure "Revolutions of France and Brabant". A talented journalist, Desmoulins constructed the texts of his issues using "Aesopian" language and allegorical images, which, however, were quite understandable to his contemporaries. Desmoulins' political position became increasingly irreconcilable with the government's terrorist policy. In the end, the fight against Robespierre from the pages of the newspapers led to Desmoulins ending up on the guillotine.

Delegitimizing protest: Psychology's omissions and commissions

AbstractPsychological research has failed to take accountability for the ways it has aligned with State interests, at the expense of solidarity with Black people protesting the criminal legal system and pursuing liberation in the U.S. Through a case study analysis of six psychological research articles, ranging from 1968 to 2022, this paper tracks evidence of psychology's alignment with the State's interests. Evidence emerges in clinical disease(s) assigned to enslaved and incarcerated Black people (drapetomania, protest psychosis) and in empirical assumptions and (il)logics binding research methods and analyses. While theoretical and methodological frameworks, language (“patients,” “rioters,” “ghetto residents,” “minority group members”) and levels of analysis (psyche, personality, social, community, identity, movement) evolve over time and across subdisciplines, racialized carceral ideologies persist across psychological research approaches. By tracing carceral footprints across this vast psychological literature, this analysis reveals how traditional empirical research weaponized pathologizing and criminalizing accounts to delegitimize Black protests of State violence from the Civil Rights Movement to the Movement for Black Lives and beyond.

“I Am a Meme”

Founder of the collectives Casa Drag Latina and House of Gad, Gad Yola is an Afro-Peruvian multidisciplinary artivist based in the city of Madrid. As part of a trans-Atlantic Latinx queer media history, Gad Yola’s career allows us to inquire about what can be described as transvestite, antiracist, and transfeminist drag “positioning” against injustices happening on both sides of the Atlantic. Be this their rejection of state violence in Peru, their support for the massive regularization of migrants in Spain, their critique of the racist gaze, or their celebration of brown bodies, Gad Yola’s interventions significantly contribute to the cultural articulation of antiracism in Spain. The following interview will consider the digital and feminist interrelation by focusing on Gad Yola’s identification with antiracism, transfeminism, and their references, as well as on the use of social networks as identity and community resources.

The India League and the Condition of India: Agnotological Imperialism, Colonial State Violence and the Making of Anticolonial Knowledge 1930–4

Abstract This article explores the 1932 visit to India of a delegation of Labour party figures associated with the India League, a prominent anticolonial organisation based in London, charged with investigating the colonial state violence unleashed by ‘Ordinance Rule’. It also examines efforts taken by the Government of India, India Office and Indian Political Intelligence to suppress their findings, through which it explores a dialectic between anticolonial knowledge-making and agnotological imperialism, which often took the form of the latter ‘exceptioning’ examples produced by the former of excessive colonial state violence. It offers the conclusion that the contradictions between liberal imperialism and the rule of colonial difference and repression in the age of mass nationalism in India and mass democracy in Britain meant that liberal imperialism in India increasingly flowed, paradoxically, from illiberalism in Britain.

Terrorism in Pakistan Impact on National Security

Terrorism presents a substantial obstacle in the current global political landscape, leading to changes in approaches to national security. The 9/11 attacks had a significant and far-reaching effect, on South Asia, notably in Pakistan, prompting leaders such as President George W. Bush to intensify worldwide counter-terrorism efforts. This research examines the relationship between terrorism and national security, focusing on Pakistan's experience with cross-border terrorism from Afghanistan, particularly in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The study argues that terrorism surpasses conventional conflict standards and poses existential risks to national security. The study also highlights the impact of terrorist spillover from Afghanistan on Pakistan's territorial integrity, political sovereignty, and core institutions. The study also highlights the degradation of civil freedoms, economic pressures, and social divides due to terrorism. The research advocates for strong counter-terrorism strategies and global collaboration to strengthen national security and maintain global peace. The research advocates for a comprehensive strategy to address terrorism, emphasizing self-sufficiency and global cooperation, aiming to successfully battle terrorism while preserving national autonomy and democratic government in international affairs.

Humanitarianism as a tool of statecraft: contested authority, sovereign violence, and humanity in the Syrian civil war.

This research explores the dynamics of interaction between the sovereign state and international humanitarian organisations in alleviating human suffering in the Syrian civil war. Considering civil wars as a rupture in sovereignty, its focus is on the practices of the sovereign state within its social context and the resulting implications for aid organisations. I argue that the Syrian regime has employed state violence, in tandem with administrative and bureaucratic impediments, to reassert its sovereign authority in humanitarian decision-making processes. This exercise of sovereign power is intertwined with the actions of aid organisations, thereby reshaping power dynamics among the state, aid organisations, and vulnerable populations. Through a qualitative method, I show that the deployment of state violence concomitantly pushes aid organisations, specifically the United Nations, towards enforcing the state sovereignty defined by the regime. As an effect of assertive sovereignty, interpretations of humanitarian principles and practices are continuously negotiated and constructed differently by aid organisations, even though they share a common overarching goal.

Легитимность насилия в техногенном обществе

The author examines the transformation of violence as a way of survival into “violence of power”, characteristic of modern civilization, the legitimacy of its legitimization, the use of resources of the information network society, technogenic civilization to regulate internal and external state relations, and new management perspectives. The legitimacy of the activities of states that claim the right to identify weak, dying or failed states as the source of modern political violence, instability and threats, and to carry out "humanitarian missions" against them, is called into question. The types of violence that are logically built into the development system of modern technogenic society, such as economic, institutional, and informational, are considered. Attention is drawn to the effectiveness of new technologies for the introduction of military innovations and the development of military potential in support of external legitimate state violence. The inability of modern society to control and regulate increasingly complex information systems and the tendency of the authorities to proactively assess negative consequences and prevent the possibility of their occurrence are emphasized. The mechanisms of a technogenic society contribute both to the control of the legitimacy of power and provide the power with the opportunity to control society. Therefore, a culture of peace can serve as a new trend in the development of humanity.

The Intersectionality of State Violence, Gender Violence, and Historical Victimization: Focusing on Sexual Violence against Women by Martial Law Forces during the May 18 Democratization Movement

The Intersectionality of State Violence, Gender Violence, and Historical Victimization: Focusing on Sexual Violence against Women by Martial Law Forces during the May 18 Democratization Movement

Revisiting dark pasts: the portrayal of Jewish minority and audience responses to the Netflix series The Club

ABSTRACT The Club, a Turkish series exclusively produced for Netflix, challenges the official historical narrative of modern Turkey by depicting the experiences of minorities on the brink of the country’s political upheaval. It highlights the state’s complex relations with its minorities and historical events that are often silenced in the official historical narrative. This study looks at how Turkey’s dark pasts pertaining to its religious minorities are portrayed in The Club and the ways in which its audience respond to these dark pasts. It argues that the audience of The Club recreates the silences about the past, resulting in the denial or rationalization of state violence, while emphasizing a nostalgic multi-cultural past.

State Violence, Divine Abuse

Abstract It is tempting to attribute state violence to the imposition of a normative order, and it is tempting to construct an opposition between sanctifying that order and messianic interruptions of that order. This framework supposes that God, and the surrounding language of the sacred, follows the logic of rule, imposing a set of expectations on what is to be done enforced by threat of punishment. But what if we centre the story of Job in our account of the divine and with it an image of God as abuser rather than ruler, that is, God as only imposing the phantom of norms, norms that shift or evaporate as soon as they are imposed, never fulfilling a promise of reward or threat of punishment as expected? I explore this possibility through brief encounters with two texts on the racial violence of the state, one by Aimé Césaire and the other by the contemporary Black American writer Kiese Laymon.

Laughing at the state: state violence and satirical acts of citizenship in the Afro-Brazilian diaspora

This article explores acts of humour that enact citizens as political subjects in the face of state violence and practices of controlled incorporation of racialised Afro-Brazilian others. To do this I analyse hitherto unstudied material from the online memes that followed the forced disappearance of Mr Amarildo de Souza by the ‘pacifying’ police in Rio de Janeiro. Doing this I show how multi-modal online memes that take an ironic stance towards state-violence can be understood as enacting a radical equality which subverts the state-sanctioned racialised and gendered distribution of unequal functions and places that serves to ‘pacify’ threatening racialised others. Thus, I argue that the act of joking is an act of citizenship because it presupposes equality while enacting an incongruity between this equality and the reality of racist state violence, and its ostensible purpose of ‘saving’ racialised victims. In this way ironic memes can provide an important contribution to theory of citizenship, which hitherto has not involved the study of humour as a political act. Thus, if the political nature of humour involves incongruity between conceptualisation and experience, abstract and sensory/objective, sanctity and profanity, dignity and baseness, acts that ironically enact these incongruities as existing in and between state-discourse and practice are deeply political acts and need to be studied as such.

Преодоление политико-теологической логики в анархизме Густава Ландауэра

Schmitt’s flagship project of political theology has recently become the subject of widespread discussion in political philosophy. One of the trends that has emerged in the interpretations of this project is associated with criticism of Carl Schmitt’s political-theological approach itself. An increasing number of authors see political theology as a serious challenge for modernity, considering it a tool for justifying and legitimizing state violence. Therefore, there is a need to overcome political-theological logic and turn to other strategies for thinking about the political. At the same time, the question of resources that could act as an alternative to Schmitt’s project is becoming more relevant. The article proves that anarchist theory can become such a resource. The author, however, does not mean its classical version, reflected in the works of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin. Having reconstructed Schmitt’s vision of anarchism, he shows that, although the German philosopher’s interpretation of anarchist theory was not completely correct, Schmitt was not entirely wrong when he called the classical anarchists of the 19th century anti-theological theologians and anti-dictatorship dictators, qualifying them as inverted counterparts to the theorists of state absolutism. However, anarchist thought is not confined to the attitudes of the followers of Bakunin and Proudhon. Thus, the author turns to the concept of Gustav Landauer, the German anarchist of the early 20th century, demonstrating that it is free from the inherent flaws of classical anarchism and presupposes a model of political thinking that is fundamentally different from Schmitt’s model, being located outside the political-theological frame. According to his conclusion, being free from political and theological assumptions, this model allows one to talk about politics and the social outside of the usual terms, such as state, power, domination, and subordination, moving rather towards the idea of autonomous communities, excluded from the current state order and at the same time coexisting with such order.

Black Lives in Limbo: Liberian Refugees, Migrant Justice, and the Narration of Antiblack U.S. Border Politics

The Trump administration’s attacks on immigrant communities, especially undocumented people, produced major policy reversals on temporary humanitarian relief programs, such as the termination of Deferred Enforced Departure (DED). While these policies have had wide-reaching impacts across communities of color, within the broader immigration debate, the experiences of Black migrants have often been overlooked. This paper asks the following questions: How did extremist policies impact Black migrants under the Trump administration? What vulnerabilities did these policies produce or exacerbate? What do these efforts tell us about the “turn” toward authoritarianism in U.S. politics? Applying antiblackness as a theoretical framework, this paper conducts a content analysis of media outlets to examine the impact of extremist policies on Liberian DED beneficiaries. The ramifications of these policies intensified pre-existing antiblack dynamics of belonging and exclusion within the state by reinforcing racial hierarchies, producing social exclusion and vulnerability to state violence, and maintaining constrained access to citizenship. In assessing the many ways that antiblack racism manifests for citizens and non-citizens alike, we can extend our understanding of migrant justice, racial justice, and anti-imperialism as interdependent struggles in the face of rising authoritarianism.

Pathways Through the Sea: Decolonial Geopoetics of the Mediterranean in Italian Folksong

Extending and connecting scholarship on decolonial geopoetics, critical Mediterraneanism and maritime (wet and more-than-wet) ontologies, this paper discusses Genoese folksinger Fabrizio De André’s political, poetical, and geographical work on the Mediterranean Sea. De André has been considered as a pioneer of “World Music” for his linguistic and historical research on sounds and stories of the Mediterranean. Yet, a socially and politically committed intellectual, De André fostered agendas that went well beyond the role that this author played in the history of Italian and international folksong, and should interest scholars in geography, geopolitics and geopoetics. Exploring his original texts and recollections, I argue that De André’s works open ways to connect critical studies on the Mediterranean to broader scholarship on decoloniality and relational ontologies. This emerges especially through his commitment to challenge cultural and linguistic borders, listening to “histories from below” and denouncing the colonial violence of states and other oppressive powers in North-South Mediterranean relations. Furthermore, De André’s geopoetics fosters ideas of Mediterranean entanglements between land and sea that challenge statist territorialities, enhancing different geopoetic and geopolitical imaginations to address current matters on migration, racism and exclusion.

Returns, Marches and Countermarches: The Agony for Truth and Justice

The present research aims to describe and characterize the actions in the reparation processes of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, and Mothers and Relatives of Disappeared Detainees, in Argentina and Uruguay respectively, in the period from 2005 to 2015, in the face of the effects of political violence and state terrorism. It is proposed to make visible what the organizations' actions have been to influence advances in reparations, with special emphasis on concrete actions in contexts of self-styled "progressive" governments. A qualitative research is proposed, with the substantive use of the technique of documentary analysis and in-depth interviews for data collection, and for the analysis of said data we proceeded through discourse analysis. The results indicate that the central axes linked to comprehensive reparation in each organization are oriented towards: psychosocial reparation, accompaniment in the search process, progress at the legal level, recognition by the State of its responsibility before the crimes committed, the clarification of the truth, especially in the awareness of young people, with an educational paradigm that encourages education for memory. Reparatory mechanisms have manifested themselves in a similar way in the contexts of political progressivism, both in Argentina and Uruguay. However, the Argentine context has established a greater deployment of policies, with a special focus on the restitution of rights, and guarantees of non-repetition, developing an instituting policy promoted by the human rights movement. In the Uruguayan case, although progressivism enabled the creation of new institutions, providing new spaces and a budget to respond to the citizenship and mainly to the victims' relatives, for truth, justice and reparation, these have been poorly satisfactory measures, in where there is still a consolidation of policies, demanded by the human rights movement.

Do Trials as Part of Transitional Justice Challenge the Stigma Related to Being Targeted by Serious Human Rights Violations?

Abstract There is often stigma attached to being the victim of state violence, as being targeted by state violence is often seen as proof that a person is guilty. This article discusses whether trials as part of transitional justice can challenge such stigma. Trials can provide a legal truth, through identifying what has happened, who the perpetrators are, and who the victim is. Trials and court hearings are an expression of what societies accept, and when a perpetrator is sentenced it is an expression of solidarity with the victim. The article compares how persons targeted by state violence by former regimes in Argentina and Peru describe and perceive of such stigma, how stigma has changed over time and with contemporary trials. There are important differences between the countries regarding the violent history, the groups targeted by state violence, and the ongoing trials, also regarding the outcome of the trials.

Failure to Enroll: The Blurring Rhetorical Power of Anonymizing Tools and Photographs in Making In/Visible Black Lives

As Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests surged in response to the continued murders of black men and women, state surveillance practices, too, have increasingly monitored, tracked, and prosecuted protesters. Among the growing surveillance arsenal are facial recognition technologies (FRT), which authorities use to identify protesters, often leading to the mis/recognition of black and brown people, false arrests, and blacklisting from public spaces. In response to the prevalence of FRT, protesters and photographers are urging and employing anonymizing blurring technologies to evade state and citizen surveillance. I argue that these technologies materially and rhetorically disrupt the racialized surveillant gaze. I employ Simone Browne’s (2015) term “dark sousveillance” as a framework for understanding how blurring technologies enable evasion from state violence and promote ethical photography practices. Such practices challenge the relationship between whiteness and the law enforcement surveillance regime.

Hierarchy in the Politics of Migration: Revisiting Race, Ethnicity, and Power in the Migration State

Migrants and refugees face hostile publics and organized political interests, and contend with new and evolving forms of surveillance, deportability, and political violence. Researchers show that these political dynamics are fundamentally shaped by the politics of race and ethnicity. Yet, even as this work is increasingly abundant, it has not always been taken up by mainstream accounts of migration. In this article, we revisit scholarship on the politics of international migration, bringing together a collection of — sometimes disparate — research to explore how scholars can forge new lines of inquiry regarding the relationship between migration, race, ethnicity, and power. To do so, we evaluate three types of relationships at the core of migration politics: the relationship between migration and the state, the migration-related demands of domestic publics on the state, and how migrants interact and contend with the state. Across these relationships, we examine how ethnoracial hierarchies draw on, legitimize, and reinforce uneven distributions of political power, disparate deployments of state action and violence, and projects of nation- and state-building. Combining the intellectual prowess of distinct fields and approaches, we draw on productive convergences and tensions between existing and emerging frameworks and analytic starting points across disciplines to map future research trajectories in the multidisciplinary study of immigration, citizenship, asylum, and racial and ethnic politics. We conclude with a note on the politics of knowledge production–whereby some accounts of migration have been privileged over others–and point to important epistemological and methodological interventions for advancing research on the politics of migration.

Advancing the science of adverse childhood experiences and resilience: A case for global and ecological perspectives

Research on adverse childhood experiences and resilience (the process of overcoming trauma) has been dominated by studies originating in wealthy democracies of the global north. We call for more global and ecological approaches not only for documenting the true global burden of childhood adversity, but also for advancing the science of resilience and understanding pathways to overcoming trauma. We identify several forms of trauma that need better consideration in prevalence estimates, including state, political, and institutional violence, crisis migration, climate change and related natural disasters, and global health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. We also need more nuanced analyses of culture and place and to recognize that the global south and global north are not monolithic concepts. We offer illustrative examples of how more global, ecological approaches can enhance our understanding of pathways to overcoming even high dosages of childhood adversity. One of the key insights of ACEs research, the dose-response relationship between trauma burden and outcomes, has been extended to research on resilience. Concepts that capture the total “dose” of positive assets and resources (people's resilience portfolios) are showing how people might overcome even high doses of trauma. This work can become more global by including incorporating strengths and healing processes common in collectivist, versus individualistic, cultures. It can become more ecological by recognizing that physical environments—both natural and human-made built aspects—play key roles in resilience. Recognizing the intersectionality among these elements can take us to the next generation of trauma and resilience science.