Violent Implications Research Articles

The Violent Implications of Opposition to the Istanbul Convention

This paper focuses on campaigns against the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention). These campaigns not only obstructed ratification processes in a number of countries, but also that the openly hostile and highly gendered attacks had a direct impact on women’s rights activists and their work, seriously hindering their work, but also affecting their well-being and safety. In this paper we explore the violent implications of the campaigns against the Istanbul Convention which are part of wider anti-gender campaigns. We argue that the violence of the campaigns and the violent implications should be considered gendered political violence, which effectively marginalizes women and other targeted groups and obstructs their participation in society and politics and as such is central to current autocratization tendencies and undermining of democracy.

India's Muslims: The 'Other' Within?

Three assumptions have been crucial to the Hindu Right wing’s discourse in post independence India. Firstly, this discourse takes as a priori that Islam is a foreign import to India. Accordingly, the coming of the faith to the subcontinent during the Medieval period is seen as having ‘cataclysmic’ implications, disturbing its erstwhile tranquility in the form of forced conversions, temple desecrations and so on. Secondly, this discourse conceives Modern Indian Muslims as a discrete, homogenous community, whose loyalty is at worst questionable, on account of their affiliation with a foreign civilization. Lastly, in its self-perception, the Hindu Right partly derives legitimacy by presenting itself as successors and custodians of a Millennium-old Hindu subjectivity: a collective Hindu trauma precipitated by the cataclysmic coming of Islam in India, which enables a vision of the latter atrocities through ‘memory’. Critics often point to the violent implications of this discourse for Indian Muslims, especially since the rise of the BJP in the late 20th Century and the waves of communal violence that it has left in its wake. Less often do critics delve into the historical veracity of the Hindu Right’s claims. Far from being an ‘objective’ contact with memory, I will show how the Hindu Right’s discourse derives its genealogy from the British colonial discourse on Islam and the Muslim community in India. I shall do so by analyzing British colonial narratives, in relation to statements on Muslims issued by the two earliest RSS chiefs. Moreover, I will highlight how this discourse grossly oversimplifies the history of Islam in the subcontinent. This kind of a historical critique will be significant in unsettling the Hindu Right’s claims to memory and not just in condemning the violent manifestations of its politics.

Promoting Qur'anic Verses That Reject Violence

This article highlights the mistaken paradigms that underpin the use of Islam to justify violence and terrorism. Its exploration of the Qur'an shows that Islam emphasizes peaceful values and promotes non-violent approaches; this study, thus, differs from previous ones that have argued Islam's emphasis on peace based on a deconstruction of verses with violent implications, thereby challenging religious violence and violence perpetrated in religion's name. This study analyses the content of the Quranic verses that emphasize Islam's openness and friendliness, prohibit acts of violence and narrate the peaceful resolution of problems as well as mitigating conflict. The analysis of these patterns of Quranic verses shows Islam's alignment with the values ​​of peace and, conversely, disapproval of violence. This exploration of the non-violent values offered by the Qur'an thus offers an important complement to the existing literature on peace and Islam. This study, thus, emphasizes the strategies to promote non-violence which are universal values ​​of the Qur’an.
 
 Received: 26 July 2021 / Accepted: 20 September 2021 / Published: 5 November 2021

Water weaponization in the Syrian conflict: strategies of domination and cooperation

Abstract How do actors weaponize water in intrastate conflicts? Existing typologies of water weaponization make deterministic differentiations between state and non-state actors and invoke opaque labels like ‘terrorism’. Furthermore, these typologies ignore how various actors engaged in violent conflict also cooperate over water, and whether water weaponization occurs beyond war. I propose a new typology for water weaponization in an analysis of the case of Syria, drawing on the leaked ‘ISIS papers’ as well as primary sources and interviews. The study begins by charting how the Ba'athist regime used water as a weapon of domination and legitimacy against its Kurdish population with infrastructure that would later facilitate the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria's (ISIS) ability to take hold of northeast Syria. I then turn to how non-state armed groups like ISIS and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) have adopted strategies of water weaponization similar to the Syrian government by targeting and channelling water systems with major tactical implications. Finally, I show how enemy parties such as ISIS and the al-Assad regime weaponized cooperative water agreements to advance their mutual interests with violent implications for civilians. As such, I sort strategies of water weaponization into four categories: domination and legitimacy, military tools, military targets, and cooperation. In doing so, this new typology makes three main contributions, by: 1) accounting for how water is weaponized in state-society relations outside conflict; 2) refining existing definitions of water as a military tool and target; and 3) appraising the weapon-like effects of water cooperation.

Abnormality and Stigmatization in Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting

The article proposes a reading of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting that parts from previous criticism that mostly concerned itself with debating a supposed glamorization of heroin abuse. Instead, this article focuses on the discursive mechanisms that classify the novel’s characters as abnormal subjects with a created need to be disciplined and normalized. Specifically, it addresses Mark Renton’s classification as abnormal in terms of ideology and drug addiction and how such labeling is related to stigmatization. Theoretical considerations regarding abnormality, stigmatization and the psychiatric discourse from the works of Michel Foucault, Erwin Goffman and Thomas Szasz are incorporated to the discussion of Mark Renton’s mechanomorphist construction and its violent implications.

The Modern State, the Question of Genocide, and Holocaust Scholarship

ABSTRACTThis review article asks: what defines mass violence in the twentieth century as particularly modern and how does the Holocaust figure in this history? The article compares the work of two path-breaking historians—Mark Levene and Timothy Snyder—while also discussing recent research by other scholars. It argues that the emergence of nation-states, together with technology and scientific knowledge to alter the environment, created the conditions for distinctly modern violence aiming to destroy diversity in societies and the environment. The article examines the relation between genocide, including the Holocaust, and the rise of twentieth-century nation-states. It follows the persistent idea that the Holocaust is unique in a way that establishes a hierarchy of Holocaust/genocide/other mass violence. As Levene argues, the contextualization of the complex set of events and processes called the Holocaust within the violent history of ethno-national and ethno-religious “homogenization” of nation-states challenges this framework. The article then turns to Snyder’s argument that, since Hitler’s worldview of racial struggle over land and food rejected agricultural science, genetic engineering in agriculture is one way to heed the Holocaust’s warning. A discussion of the devastating impact of genetic engineering in agriculture—in the frame of the violent implications of modern “development”—underscores how the destruction of societies perceived as “backward,” particularly indigenous groups in the Global South, follows the destruction of their biodiverse habitats and agriculture to make way for monoculture genetically engineered crops. A focus on case studies of such mass violence and the responses by indigenous groups facilitates, finally, a discussion of the recent turn to microhistories in Holocaust scholarship. These offer another contextualized view: of the societies that faced the assault of nation-states. The article concludes that the complexities on the social level, each rooted in specific circumstances and histories, challenge the analytical value of the general term “Holocaust.”

Freedom's Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s (review)

Reviewed by: Freedom's Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s Blake Slonecker Freedom's Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s Robert Cohen New York: Oxford University Press, 2009; 512 pages. $34.95, ISBN 9780195182934 When Mario Savio first encountered Marx's maxim, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," he was struck not by its radical economic implications, but by how easily the line might have been culled from Christ's Sermon on the Mount. For a man who never embraced Marxism and who spent much of his adult life rejecting his childhood Catholicism, Savio's entwinement of Marx and Christ is surprising. But it is precisely that pastiche of disparate ideologies that formed Savio's independent radicalism. Savio's aversion to dogmatism—whether religious or secular—forms the dominant theme of Robert Cohen's exhaustive biography of the avatar of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement (FSM). Sandwiching a lengthy treatment of the FSM between shorter sections about Savio's pre-1964 radicalization and post-1965 struggles, Freedom's Orator filters the FSM through Savio's "passionate yet logical, accessible, democratic, and at times poetic oratory" (3). Cohen reveals a man who reluctantly accepted fame because it promised to empower others. Although Freedom's Orator belongs on a short shelf of essential FSM histories, Savio's later obscurity disarms Cohen's attempt to explore "the radical legacy of the 1960s." Savio had already been walking the path of radical democracy when the FSM forever changed his life. By 1964, he had developed a "secularized liberation theology" influenced by the Catholic left, assisted the poor in Taxco, Mexico, and participated in Oakland's Sheraton Palace sit-in (6). Savio's experience as a Freedom Summer volunteer in Mississippi only reinforced his inchoate belief in the power of community organizing and nonviolent civil disobedience. Also in Mississippi, Bob Moses provided Savio with a leadership model that highlighted moral action and community empowerment. Savio enlisted those forces when he returned to Berkeley and discovered that the University of California administration had eliminated the free speech area on the Bancroft strip. Because the FSM hinged on constitutional liberties, the movement matched Savio's distinctive intellect. Savio studied physics, read philosophy, understood American intellectual history, and maintained [End Page 142] an eclectic religious literacy. Such influences were sometimes explicit—he waxed poetic about Herodotus from atop a police car. But more oft en his intellectual undergirding remained implicit. Observers have identified hints of Thoreau, Whitman, Gandhi, Tolstoy, Chaplin, King, Marcuse, Mills, and Camus in his legendary "Bodies Upon the Gears" speech, despite Savio mentioning none of them (179). But Cohen argues that intellectualism always remained secondary to Savio, who aspired to an egalitarian relationship with the audience. Such "hyperdemocracy" represented Savio's political ideal, which became especially apparent at the nadir of FSM protest. When Savio stepped to the microphone near Sproul Hall midway through that chaotic autumn, FSM leaders remained divided about the wisdom of a planned sit-in. With police descending on campus, Savio and other FSM leaders debated the merits of the sit-in before a confused crowd. Drawing on the Freedom Summer leadership of Bob Moses, Savio saw honest debate as the only moral method of confronting students with the violent implications of a police bust. That sit-in failed, but it represented the democratic apex of a wildly successful movement. Nevertheless, the FSM became entwined with the identity of its leader. That fact roiled Savio, who shrank from such attention and worried that his publicity distracted from the FSM's democratic reality. The consequences of fame partially accounted for Savio's descent from FSM leadership and lack of activism after 1965. But Cohen—like Savio himself—struggles to explain these developments. As early as 1965, Cohen indicates, Savio became "uncomfortable with the ‘abstract quality' of the movement's increasingly Marxified discourse" (244). The specter of fringe Marxist-inspired violence looms over Cohen's final chapters. But Savio's worries about Marxist dogma shrouded the fact that widespread Marxist radicalization remained at least two years away. That makes Savio's descent from New Left leadership even more baffling...

Guerra, violência e pulsão de morte: uma articulação não evidente

O objetivo deste artigo é, por meio uma articulação psicanalítica entre as noções de guerra, violência e pulsão de morte, tecer uma reflexão sobre a guerra e a violência psíquica implicadas nas vivências de guerra. Parte-se do pressuposto de que esta articulação não é tão evidente quanto parece, ideia que se justifica a partir de uma análise de textos freudianos sobre os três temas. Esta trilha conduz à abordagem de temáticas correlatas, tais como o trauma, a compulsão à repetição e as neuroses de guerra, permitindo uma discussão sobre as implicações violentas da guerra para os indivíduos e para a humanidade. Como modalidades radicais de defesa diante de tais implicações violentas são considerados processos psíquicos como a negação e a clivagem, porém existem também soluções defensivas não patológicas, como a possibilidade de perlaboração do trauma ou de sublimação da pulsão de morte em suas expressões sádicas.

Le féminisme de Virginie Despentes a l'étude dans le roman Baise-moi

Drawing on the ideas developed by Judith Butler in her book Bodies That Matter , this article interprets Virginie Despentes' first novel Baise-moi as a literary reflection on the violent implications of the constitution and preservation of a coherent female subjectivity. The first part of the article examines the highly complex relationship that develops between Despentes' heroines over the course of the novel, showing that the two female protagonists cannot be reduced to a single subjectivity. Building on this analysis, the second part then highlights two principles of Despentes' feminism: her refusal of analogical thinking and her affirmation of contradictory identities.

Geographical Ontology: Levinas, Sacred Landscapes and Cities

Cities inscribe on the earth a text of human being-in-the world. They contain, repress, facilitate, control and decimate nature. Put another way, the geography of our being-in-the world profoundly shapes human experience of nature. This article proceeds through a dialogue between my own mystical experiences in nature. and a rereading of Levinas.s account of face-to-face relations with the Other through which I argue that nature can be understood as Other. However, beyond a romanticised conception of nature as harmonious and
 ecologically balanced, a sophisticated Levinasian reading of face-to-face relations confronts us with the disruptive, violent implications of proximity to nature. This also provides an account of the violent, suppressive and distancing response of humans to nature. Further, the conceptualisation of nature as Other suggests some alternative urban experiences that may be seen as part of the human encounter with nature. In particular I examine human mortality as an aspect of
 nature. Finally, the sacred is found, both in urban and rural contexts, in that moment of transcendence when human responses to the Other of nature take them out of, or beyond, their ontological being to an ethical moment of relationship.

Thomas Hardy, Monism, and the Carnival Tradition: The One and Many in 'The Dynasts'

In this original and scrupulously researched book, G. Glen Wickens offers a new reading of a work which is often ignored by critics and students of Victorian literature, Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts. Wickens explores the monistic viewpoint of The Dynasts through reference to 19th and early 20th philosophical writings which have never before been applied to Hardy's philosophy. Using insights derived from the critical theory of Mikhail Bakhtin - in particular his concept of carnival - Wickens also counters the usual view of The Dynasts as failed epic or tragedy, and instead situates the work as a novel within the serio-comical genres. In doing so, he brings out new, violent implications to Bakhtin's theory of laughter and carnival. Thomas Hardy, Monism, and the Carnival Tradition is the first book-length study of Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts since 1977. It will be of interest to Hardy scholars, critics of Bakhtin, and to readers interested in monist philosophy or nineteenth century history.

“This Implacable Doctrine”: Behaviorism in Wyndham Lewis’s Snooty Baronet

Wyndham Lewis's 1932 novel Snooty Baronet has received little of attention that focuses on this spikily provocative writer's work. Two of most valuable book-length studies of Lewis, Fredric Jameson's Fables of Aggression and David Ayers's Whydham and Western Man, barely mention it. One earlier study, Hugh Kenner's Wyndham Lewis, characterized novel as likable but minor, peppy and pointless (109), and another, William Pritchard's Wyndham Lewis, saw it as the novelist's last gesture in a blind alley (114). The relative obscurity in which Snooty Baronet abides fell upon it as early as its original publication. Bradford Morrow and Bernard Lafour-cade, Lewis's chief bibliographers, found only three contemporary reviews (288-89). The bad odor lingering from receptions of The Apes of God (1930), an enormous and impolitic satire on several highly recognizable London literary figures, and of Hitler (1931), a myopic piece of special pleading for not-yet-in-power Nazis and their leader, may explain silence. himself suspected a boycott, (1) but Morrow and Lafourcade located 12 notices of The Doom of Youth, a polemical work, and nine of Filibusters in Barbary, a travel book, both published in 1932, so there is no reason to suppose Lewis's books were being systematically ignored (286-89). Snooty Baronet certainly ran into unusually hard circumstances, however. It was first of his novels for which he found no US publisher (the first US edition was a Haskell House reprint in 1971). In England, according to Lewis, both Boots's and Smith's lending libraries, uncomfortable with novel's passages of sexual description, hit upon singularly effective suppressive strategy of buying only 25 copies and keeping them off public display shelves, thus restricting novel's availability without giving it sales boost that an outright ban might have effected (Creatures 184-85). As if all that were not enough, Rupert Grayson, whose firm had published Filibusters in Barbary, initiated a suit for libel on detecting his own likeness in Humphrey Cooper, one of Snooty Baronet's characters (Meyers 218-19). Inscribing a copy for an acquaintance years later, wrote, This is bad hat of my family of books [...] (qtd. in Materer 100). Bad hat though it may be, Snooty Baronet deserves and rewards attention, as I hope to show with a two-track argument. First, there is question of whether Lewis merely employs fiction as a means to explore violent implications of current social (Foshay 108). The novel certainly targets ideas of John B. Watson, American behaviorist psychologist, but to take that as closing discussion of book, rather than opening it, is to miss an opportunity to situate novel in Lewis's career as a polemicist and to explore craggy, fissured contours of his worldview, one of Anglo-American modernism's vastest and strangest ideological edifices. That novel emerges from Lewis's campaign against behaviorist psychology is quite true, but it should not be horizon of discussion, because behaviorism was messily cathected to everything else feared and loathed. Second, reading proposed here will argue that behaviorism is for no ordinary antagonist. Like a tar-baby, it is one from which he cannot extricate himself. Two of novel's relatively few advocates, Timothy Materer and Daniel Schenker, see its main value in its attack on behaviorism and its main formal achievement in Lewis's orchestration of an unwitting self-exposure, by narrator and title character, Sir Michael Keil-Imrie, of his own viciousness and moral inanity. Materer compares Lewis's novel to Lolita in that Kell-Imrie, like Humbert Humbert, attempts a narrative of self-justification but instead, at length, more clearly reveals his own guilt, making plain pseudo-scientific inhumanity of behaviorist theories was satirizing (101). …