On Violence: A Reader

591 Pages·2007·1.74 MB·English

by  Bruce B. Lawrence

ON VIOLENCE
on
duke university press durham and london 2007
violence
a reader
Edited by Bruce B. Lawrence and Aisha Karim
∫ 2007 Duke University Press
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper $ Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan.
Typeset in Minion and Meta by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data appear
on the last printed page of this book.
Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the support
of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, which
provided funds toward permission costs of this book.
FOR JAMES HESTER
AND KAREN COLVARD,
pillars and pioneers
of research on violence

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
General Introduction: Theorizing Violence in the Twenty-first Century 1
PART I. THE DIALECTICS OF VIOLENCE 17
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit 27
Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring 39
Karl Heinrich Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy 62
Frantz Fanon, Concerning Violence (The Wretched of the Earth) 78
PART II. THE OTHER OF VIOLENCE 101
ACTORS
Mohandas K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home Rule 110
Adolf Hitler, The Right of Emergency Defense (Mein Kampf ) 127
Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet 143
CRITICS
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks 158
Raymond Williams, Keywords; Marxism and Literature 180
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice 188
James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance 199
PART III. THE INSTITUTION OF VIOLENCE: THREE CONNECTIONS 215
FAMILIAL
Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego 226
Linda Gordon, Social Control and the Powers of the Weak (Heroes of Their
Own Lives) 245
Del Martin, Battered Wives 255
LEGAL
Bruce B. Lawrence, The Shah Bano Case (Shattering the Myth) 262
Walter Benjamin, Critique of Violence (Reflections) 268
Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State:
An Agenda for Theory 286
Robert M. Cover, Violence and the Word 292
Chandra Muza√ar, Human Rights and the New World Order 314
RELIGIOUS
René Girard, Violence and the Sacred 334
James Cone, Liberation and the Christian Ethic (God of the Oppressed) 351
Sharon Welch, Dangerous Memory and Alternate Knowledges (Communities
of Resistance and Solidarity) 362
Simone Weil, The Iliad, or the Poem of Force 377
PART IV. THE STATE OF VIOLENCE 391
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 399
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism 416
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison 444
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Savages, Barbarians, and Civilized Men
(Anti-Oedipus) 472
PART V. THE REPRESENTATION OF VIOLENCE 491
André Breton and Leon Trotsky, Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary
Art 498
Michael Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in
Terror and Healing 503
Kristine Stiles, Shaved Heads and Marked Bodies: Representations from
Cultures of Trauma 522
Osama bin Laden, Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the
Land of the Two Holy Places / Roland Jacquard, In the Name of Osama Bin
Laden: Global Terrorism and the Bin Laden Brotherhood 539
Elliott Leyton, Touched by Fire: Doctors without Borders in a Third World
Crisis 547
Copyright Acknowledgments 555
Index 559
viii contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A work of this scope and complexity covers many years in the life of an in-
dividual, and in the case of On Violence there were many stages from its incep-
tion as an idea to its completion as a book nearly fifteen years later.
We cannot begin to recapitulate all those who have assisted in the process.
For Bruce Lawrence, the first editor, the chain of gratitude extends back to
Bruce Kapferer, now a professor of anthropology at the University of Ber-
gen. While Lawrence and Kapferer were serving on the board of advisors for
the religion initiative at the Harry F. Guggenheim Foundation during the
early 1990s, they conceived of this project and worked together on prelim-
inary drafts. Graduate students at Duke University then stimulated and as-
sisted the continuation of the project, and when Aisha Karim became fully
committed to its completion, she also agreed to become a coeditor. Other
graduate students at Duke University who worked on the project include Randy
Styers, Scott Kugle, Ann Burlein, Youshaa Patel, and, especially in the final
stages, Brett Wilson. Undergraduates have also done time in tracking down
sources and proofreading, with Alex Barna and Sandra Hernandez deserving
special mention. Another undergraduate student, now a professor in his own
right, Louis Ruprecht Jr., provided the keen eye that led to the inclusion of
the segment from Simone Weil, and to Lou the editors owe yet one more debt of
gratitude.
On Violence would never have been possible without James Hester, president
emeritus of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and Karen Colvard, the
foundation’s senior program o≈cer. Both helped in so many ways that the
editors, happily and humbly, dedicate the book to them. Karen Colvard, in
particular, had the intelligence, the energy, and the patience without which a
project like this could never have been imagined, much less achieved its final
apotheosis as a book. Both editors express an open, and deep, gratitude to her, as
also to James Hester.
Bruce Lawrence has also been assisted by his partner, miriam cooke, at every
stage. She has read and commented on parts of the manuscript. She has helped
to make sense of gaps in its initial organization, and she has been a catalyst for
many of the good ideas that appear in the introductions. Neither miriam nor
anyone other than the editors, however, is responsible for the flaws that a book
like this must, and always will, contain. The editors have struggled with a topic,
an issue, and a problem that exceeds the bounds of both common sense and