Pl 430  Week 2 Summary

Violence in the normative (impermissible) sense is the intentional and unjustified violation by a personal agent of another person’s dignity as a moral individual by impairing that person’s capacity to dispose of her/his own life.  The seriousness of the violation increases with the degree of intentionality to do harm and the resulting degree of impairment.  Other actions and policies maybe considered violent in relation to their proximity to this paradigm understanding of violence.  (Coady, Duggan)

Thus the use of force which would be expected to result in such impairment stands in need of moral justification.  If it is unjustified, it is violence in this normative impermissible sense.

The use of force cannot be said to be legitimate or illegitimate by reason of agreement with proper authority, since no authority has moral claims over the individual conscience.  (Wolff)

Since consent is a requirement for moral responsibility, efforts to achieve consent are the legitimating origins of power, understood as the ability to act in concert with others to dispose of one’s person.  (Arendt)  Violence can destroy power by brutalizing the agents as well as the victims, making agents less sensitive to violence, precipitating events that make violence hard to control, and by making consensual activity in concert with others difficult if not impossible. Violence can never create power (in Arendt’s sense) inasmuch as the violation of personal dignity undermines the kind of consent that is a requisite for power.  (Arendt, Coady)

  Pl 430  Summary of Week 3

Cultural violence is linguistic: it is constituted by a web of social practices that proceed on the assumption that they represent the real structure of reality correctly by a dualistic positioning of separate principles according to their proximity to Being.  Thus Mind is superior to and separate from body, Reason is separate from sense, Logic from rhetoric—all of these oppositions summed up in the claim that Self is superior to and expected to control the (alien) other.  This cultural “violence” can be used to justify and legitimate structural and direct violence by those agents associated with the higher principle against those associated with the lower principle. (Galtung)

The discourse of sexuality and gender relations is a male construction and therefore an instance of structural violence to the extent that the cultural language of sexuality is used to justify masculine domination, dehumanization, objectification, and commodification of women out of hostility to the threat to masculine power that women represent  (Hartsock, Jenefsky, Seifert)

However, the discourse of gender relations is not institutionalized in the same way that slavery was institutionalized in America or anti-Semitism was institutionalized in Germany (though policies favoring men over women in marriage, parenting, the workforce, etc. have been in effect).  Therefore, it is possible to “talk back” to the discourse of gender relations, deconstruct it and reconstruct it.  (Galtung, Hartsock)

Nevertheless, feminist writings have identified troubling metaphor in our current and cultural history, which make it appear natural, or in accord with divine law to treat women according to a disadvantaged social construction.  (Galtung, Hartsock)

Direct violence occurs when 1) women are coerced into participating in the pornographic industry and 2) humans act (and no merely entertain thoughts) in such a way as to impair other humans’ capacity to dispose of their own persons. (Jenefsky, Seifert)

One way to think about changing cultural violence is to think about changing 1) the legitimating discourse, 2) the structural embodiment of the self vs. other dichotomy (pornography—Dworkin), and/or 3) the character of the actions and relationships that men and women have with one another.

Pl 430  Summary of Week Four

Emerson and War: Emerson has the transcendentalist conviction, which he borrows from Kant, that adherence to the truth, the voice of God, and appeal to the common soul of human beings will overcome all obstacles.  Therefore he argues that just as thought was translated into the institutions that support the war machine, so thought can be translated into institutions of peace.  He warns that peace will not come from fear or cowardice but from the same strength that heroes are expected to have in war but activated on behalf of peace.  Thus peace makers must be activists. and we must become a nation of lovers, convinced of the intrinsic dignity of every human being.

Thoreau and Civil Disobedience: Thoreau is protesting against the state for requiring humans to set their consciences aside in order to abide by majority rule.  This makes of humans movable forts and voting a sort of gaming device.  He insists on conscience and the conviction that there is absolute goodness which one must never sacrifice to fulfill one’s role as a subject of the state.   He says that we must be men first and subjects afterward.  With Emerson he says that truth is stronger than error and that if blood should flow a result of one’s resistance to the state, the conscience can bleed was well and this is infinitely worse.  He does not want to politically organize his protest against the state but make appeal to the majority that comprise the state as to so many humans from whom we appeal to the Maker of us all and them to themselves.

Both Emerson and Thoreau retain the transcendental conviction in the universal worth of all human beings as being created by God with a soul capable of grasping universal necessary principles that all should adhere to.  Their support of the individual against the masses is a common theme, but both are committed to the conviction that the common souls of men can be appealed to in the effort to implement the right over the expedient.

The film “The Paths of Glory” illustrates what Thoreau and Emerson were saying about the role that thought plays in making the institutions of war possible and necessary.  The absurdity of the attack on the Anthill, the order to fire on their own troops, and the travesty of the court martial and execution of innocent soldiers shows the resistance that brave lovers of peace must be prepared for.  But the fact that a peasant German girl’s folk song could bring a whole battalion of soldiers to tears is evidence that the common soul of the human person can be appealed to.

Pl 430  Summary of Week 5

Violence is the loss or impairment of the capacity for self-determination by reason of coercion.  Such use of coercion always stands in need of justification, because to deprive a person of the capacity for self-determination is to force him/her to serve another’s will, thus limiting her/him as a moral agent.

1)      One justification for the use of violent coercion is that persons who are have been the objects of coercion have the right to overthrow their oppressors violently.  Settlers have violently imposed their culture on natives in such a way that the native culture has been replaced by the culture of their European masters.  In addition, the European culture has been institutionalized in laws, policies, regulations, and customs that serve the interests of the European settlers at the expense of the native population.  The natives will not be able to recover their own voice and autonomy until the settler[s oppressive culture is removed.  It will not be removed voluntarily.  Therefore, violent removal is justified.  (Fanon)

2)      When basic human rights as well as civil rights have been systematically denied to a people and will not be granted through constitutional procedures, the use of violence against those who obstruct the exercise of these rights is justified.  (Malcolm X)

3)      One reason for resisting violence as a way of resolving conflicts is that such a recourse to violence creates a culture of violence which informs the identities of the participant of such a culture, such that those participants are dead to themselves and only have significance to the extent that they are able to excel in violent behavior.  The ability to recover a sense of self may be possible by resolving conflicts in interaction with others and joining forces to resist those who insist on socializing others into the culture of violence.  (Nicholson)

4)      Black on black violence in the inner cities has internal and external causes.  The internal cause is the lack of identity associated with an absence of power.  Violence becomes a substitute for power in such a way that the fear and “respect” generated by the violent black man is his only way to achieve identity.  This brings about inevitable clashes with other similarly situated black men.  The other external cause is capitalism and its network of regulations which determine who will win out in the competition for success.  This makes it difficult for those who lack the resources to compete.  The few black professionals that do succeed immediately resettle in more prosperous neighborhoods.  The solution is black empowerment and solidarity, beginning with the black churches and other institutions (schools and recreation centers, neighborhood associations, etc.) that will give black youth a reinvigorated sense of identity.  (Marable)

A possible criticism of #2 is the failure to distinguish between legal and metaphysical rights.  Evidence for the existence of metaphysical rights needs to be supplied, since the claim rests on confusion between descriptive and normative characteristics.  Legal rights require moral justification, nor merely political legitimacy.

Nevertheless, the relationship between a culture of violence and the lack of a culture promoting social justice over competitive individualism (colonialism for Fanon, racism in voting, housing, hiring, promoting practices for Malcolm X, inner city poverty for Nicholson) is a theme that runs through each of the readings.

Pl 430  Summary of Week VI

Gandhi and Day appeal to a metaphysical foundation to support their commitment to nonviolence.  Gandhi cites a law of love that is just as scientific as the law of gravity and will work just as inevitably.  Dorothy Day appeals to the nonviolent message of the Gospel as warrant for her stance.

Albert Camus writing a year after the end of WWII notes that the 20^th century is a century of fear where people are afraid to speak because the logic of History and conflicting ideologies—capitalism and communism—seem to be competing for domination.  Both sides have amassed atomic weapons with a view to devastating retaliation in case of attack.  Camus recommends that we give up our absolute Utopias in which the side with truth on its banner wins in favor of a relative utopia, an international democracy in which all have a voice but no one party dominates.  Thus he is hopeful that words—dialogue—will overcome munitions, and he warns that the cost of such a venture will require us in the industrialized world to give up some of the luxuries we have become accustomed to.

Henry Wallace has similar sentiments.  He proclaims that the relative inexpensiveness and ease of manufacture of atomic weapons make for a precarious world.  He too wants a world order governed by dialogue and, in that regard, encourages the Western democracies to appreciate how Russia’s history forces her to be defensive and wary of collaboration with others.

Russell Barsh sees environmental racism behind the industrial world’s policy of displacing indigenous peoples and using their lands as dumping grounds for toxic waste and environmental pollution.  He recommends decentralization as a way to offset this.  This would put indigenous people in a position to manage their own lands and to become responsible members of a larger community.  Again, dialogue and having a say in policies that effect us all is the solution to a we/them adversarial position.

Pl 430  Summary of Week Seven

Just as the discourse of the medieval and renaissance period (the Great Chain or Ladder of Being, with beings and classes positioned on the ladder according to their natures’ participation in the fullness of Being) was replaced by the discourse of modernity (the claims of universal, objective, scientific, instrumental, utilitarian reason as instantiated in the sovereign, socially contracted nation state), so, because of the excesses of scientific optimal rationality as practiced by the modern nation states (Hitler, Stalin, the Soviet Eastern Bloc), the discourse of modernity is being replace by the discourse of transnational ethnonationalism (the discourse of the tribe and its commitment to memory, blood, religion, ethnic identity).

Both nationalism and ethno-nationalism depend for their distinctiveness of identity on the Self/other dichotomy, i.e., the position that the affirmation of a strong socially constructed self can only be achieved by protecting against threats to that identity from inferior “others” by the use of coercion as well as providing for the health and growth of the Self by coercive expansion.  This adversarial competitiveness makes for a fearful world by reason of the availability of advanced technologies of destruction that may be employed by various nationalisms and ethno-nationalisms to achieve their particular ends.

Therefore, Kaldor, Appardurai, and Ahmed (and by implication Tamir) argue for a new discourse, that of international sociality, which would emphasize our common condition as human beings who need each others’  cooperation to survive and flourish rather than insisting on attention to those features which separate us.  International, inclusive organizations such as Amnesty International, Oxfam, Catholic Relief Services, as well as transnational institutions of higher learning, scientific and literary associations provide a model for more avowedly political efforts.

Questions:

1)      What efforts in altering their own discourse will those have to make who are committed to implementing the new discourse?

2)      What are the responses they can e expect on the part of others, particularly those who have a vested interest in competitive nationalism?

3)      What sacrifices are they willing to make for this effort?

4)      What are the chances of success in this effort and how important is success?

Pl 430 Week 9

Which vocabularies should we incarnate?

One answer: the vocabularies of just law which attempts to prevent and punish acts of violence.

1. One foundation for just law is thought to be natural law, an obligation to fulfill the ends of human nature which reflect Divine Law.  An objection to this position argues that nature has regularities, not goals or ends: only intentional beings have goals and these are ends that they freely devise for themselves.  Benjamin appeals to the violence imposed by Divine Law as the ultimate norm of justice, but we will never know what this law is and, therefore, must judge all human law as arbitrary violence whether it be in making or preserving law.

2. Laws that are made by human beings are called positive laws.  In what sense may these be called “just”?
   1. Foucault calls attention to the knowledge/power grid in which knowledge is the power to enforce norms, i.e. to normalize human behavior in a disciplinary matrix that is made to appear “natural,” and therefore to punish deviations--deviants—from the norm.  In this sense, positive law and the institutions that embody this law are violent.
   2. Since “justice” is an effect or determination of language which is not grounded in a grasp of an essential principle and which has no fixed or determinate meaning outside of its various linguistic uses, all notions of “justice” result from the force of language upon its users, which means that all notions of justice are violent, thereby undermining the notion of just law that prevents violence. (Derrida)
   3. However, this sheerly metaphysical comment on the necessarily performative nature of language (i.e. every linguistic commitment is a performance which includes some features and excludes others) does not address the political issue that should be addressed—those elements of poverty, malnutrition, abuse, war, exploitation, marginalization, etc. what are present in our lived social arrangements but are not necessary to these arrangements.  These are properly the subject of justice as well as their causes, the masked structural violence attendant upon our understanding of “inalienable rights to property,” received notion of “individualism,” and background cultural assumptions about human nature, the causes of poverty, and what counts as “work.” (Fraser)
   4. “Free speech” is central to a democracy’s growth and may be considered violent and therefore the subject of punitive legislation only to the extent that the violence it advocates is such as to promote imminent lawless action, which is likely to occur, and is intended by the speaker to occur, rather than merely expressing a point of view, the toleration of which is necessary for a flourishing democracy.  Allegedly dangerous points of view may be offset by opposing points of view, i.e. the solution to a problem with democracy is more democracy, not more restriction.  (Sunstein)

Pl 430 Week XI

The class was devoted to the instructor’s inviting the class to respond to three notions of the relationship of “love” to nonviolence.  The first was the metaphysical conception of love espoused by Gandhi, King, Merton, and,Day, among others. One is nonviolent in this conception because a law of love, or a principle of rationality, or a command of God requires one to love one’s neighbor.  While this conception is at the root of the pacifist movement and is responsible for the ascendancy of nonviolence, the instructor noted that this notion of love is deficient in that it does not extend to loving the other for his or her self but only because the other falls under a principle, law, or command.

The second is the pragmatic conception espoused by Gene Sharp which embraces non violence because it works better than violence to resolve conflicts among individuals or groups.  Love is not an issue for Sharp, though a person’s individual dignity is.  Nevertheless, the lack of love as motivation can make one’s nonviolent stance adversarial and a sheerly pragmatic way of dealing with an enemy.

The third notion of love, advanced by the instructor, is to see others as other “selves,” as constituting conversational partners necessary for becoming full persons or incarnated vocabularies.   This conception is consistent with the gospel injunction to love neighbor as self, for the neighbor is truly another “self,” and to do harm to the neighbor is to dehumanize oneself as well.

Pl 430 The Grand Inquisitor

Dostoevsky’s piece of imaginative fiction contrasts Ivan, the detached, Enlightenment, scientific, logical brother with the faith committed perspectivalist and holistic Father Zossima who is Alyosha’s mentor. Ivan is convinced that loving others can only be done in the abstract.  In the concrete, human beings are too full of flaws, odors, malformations—too repulsive to love.  In addition, children, who are innocent and can be loved in the concrete, suffer horribly and undeservedly from savage beatings at the hands of adults.  Ivan finds this situation to be irreconcilable with the notion of an all powerful, all loving, and all knowing God who decrees this seeming massive injustice to children to be a mysterious requirement for the universal harmony.  Ivan declares that if this is so he will respectfully hand back his ticket.  Once again, Ivan insists on the abstract notion of justice being fulfilled.  He himself does not lift a hand to alleviate the suffering that he sees around him.

Father Zossima, on the other hand, has a faith-filled perspective on the universe.  He sees that heaven is all around us and that even now we are in paradise.  He professes his solidarity with the earth and with all human beings in it, stating that we are responsible to all men, for all men, for everything.  He prefers to embrace the earth, the birds, and other animals, as well as his fellow human beings, declaring that he has not come to judge others but to be their servant.  This perspective of solidarity and care for our fellow sufferers is Dostoevsky’s response to the detached, scientific rationality of Ivan.  Dostoevsky cannot prove that Ivan is wrong or that Zossima is right.  He only asks us to consider the two pictures of human life and decide which to pursue.