Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Violence is a form of power, of the “ability of human beings to prevail over forces which are directed against them” ( Popitz 1999 : 22). It is really power in action, “action-power,” as Popitz says, a way of action, above all of harm, based on the power physically and materially to hurt other creatures or to be harmed. It is determined by the boundless relation of human beings with violence: the motivations for violence are so varied and numerous that they cannot be exhausted by any list. No genetic program limits the violent behavior of humans to certain situations. Anyone can become a perpetrator and no one and almost nothing, neither human nor anything else, whatever category, is safe from victimization. Violence means to kill, to harm, to destroy, to rob, and to expel. These are the five basic forms of violence. All varieties of violence are variants and hybrids of these forms. Among the basic forms of violence, killing stands out especially. It represents the extreme limit of violence. There is no unlimited progressive grading of violence. With killing there is absolute violence, an extreme limit of all social conflict, the end of dominance, power, and even sociation. As power over life and death, absolute violence is the experiential area for the idea of complete power, the source of absolute impotence, and the starting point for unlimited violent fantasies of immeasurable ... log in or subscribe to read full text