GROUPS AND PERSONS: REAL AND SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE

Be it real (i.e. physical) or symbolic, collective or individual, democratic or nihilistic, and so forth,  ‘violence’ represents a cultural category which varies widely depending on place and historical epoch. What can be rough and violent for some people may be viewed as value-laden by others: in Spain, for instance, bullfighting (a remnant of the ancient ritual tauroctony) is considered an art event and it demonstrates the torerors’ courage, strength and grace.

This course is meant to tackle the pragmatic function and the ethics of violence, which have been subject to considerable changes in the modern and postmodern epochs. Thus we will be commenting on the glorification of radical attitudes and actions, promoted in various forms by Karl Marx, Georges Sorel, Frantz Fanon, Jean Paul Sartre, and others; then we will turn to social activists such as Mahatma Gandhi (with his creed of ahimsa, i.e. nonviolence) or Martin Luther King, and philosophers like Karl Popper (who averred that violence can and ought to be controlled by reason and argument). In my book on this subject (The Raping of Identity, 2006), I argue that ‘nowadays the studies on social-political violence seem to have arrived at a dead-end, a post-dichotomous phase, in which neither position is thoroughly defendable.’ Anyhow, in the last four or five decades,  the scholars’ interest has moved from the disputes above to the victim condition, in other words to the mechanisms of suffering and survival.

Any type of violence (and there are a good many categories) can assume a physical or a symbolic form, but quite often these aspects are intricately mixed up: in all aggressive acts there can be found a symbolic component. I am using the notion of ‘symbolic violence’ in its wider original acceptation, but in this course there is also a module dedicated to Pierre Bourdieu’s particular meaning ascribed to it.

During the classes, the M.A. students will be encouraged to problematise the topics under discussion and to filter them through their own discerning thought.

Course instructor: Prof Radu Surdulescu

SCHEDULE 

Week 1: Philosophy, Culture, Violence 

Reading: Tobin Siebers. “Philosophy and Its Other – Violence”                                                         

Weeks 2:  The Sacrificial Factor 

Readings: B. P. Singh. Problem of Violence.   Pp. 93-105; 112-115. René Girard. Violence and the Sacred.  Pp. 1-67. Stefan Stanciugelu. Violenta, mit si revolutie. Pp. 23-30.                                                            

Week 3: Subjects of Violence 

Readings: Michel Wieviorka. La violence  Pp. 283-310. Radu Surdulescu. The Raping of Identity. Pp. 23-33.

Week 4: Violence and Modernity – An Ethical Perspective

Reading: Radu Surdulescu. The Raping of Identity.Pp. 34-54.

Week 5: State Power, State Violence 

Readings: Niccolo Machiavelli. The Prince (Chapters 8, 17, 21,25). Hannah Arendt. “Reflections on Violence”. Pp. 1-26. Stefan Stanciugelu. Violenta, mit si revolutie. Pp.  65-78.

Week 6: The Revolutionary Violence Controversy; Terrorist Actions and Mentality    

Readings: B. P. Singh. Problem of Violence.  Pp. 35-64. Luis de la Corte. Explaining Terrorism: A Psychosocial Approach, in Perspectives on Terrorism. (optional) Thomas Arciszewski, e.a. From psychology of terrorists to psychology of terrorism.

Week 7:  War Violence

Reading: Samuel Weber. ‘Wartime’, in De Vries, Hent and Weber, Samuel eds, Violence,      Identity and Self-Determination Pp. 80-105.

Week 8:  Torture, Extreme Violence

Reading: Ruxandra Cesereanu. Panopticum – Tortura politica in secolul XX.  Pp. 13-25.

Week 9:  The Lures and the Threats of Utopianism

Reading: Karl Popper. “Utopia and Violence”, in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge.  Pp. 355-363.

Week 10:  Suicide

Reading: Émile Durkheim. Suicide: A Study in Sociology: Editor’s Introduction.

Week 11: Violence in the Arts, Theatre and Literature: The aestheticisation of violence

Readings: Pei-ying Wu. “Visual Representations of Violence” (Uccello, Goya, Picasso). Thomas Gould. “The Uses of Violence in Drama”, in James Redmond (ed.). Themes in Drama, no. 13. Pp. 1-12. Ted Hughes. “The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar”

Week 12: Trauma, Memory, Story-Telling 

Readings: Cathy Caruth. Introduction I;   Introduction II, in Trauma: Explorations in Memory.  Pp. 3-12; 151-157. Bessel van der Kolk & Onno van der Hart. “The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of                Memory and the Engraving of Trauma”, in Cathy Caruth (ed.). Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Pp. 158-182.                              

Week 13: Memory and Violence 

Readings: Memory as a Form of Violence, in R. Surdulescu. The Raping of Identity.Pp. 116-127. The Violence of Posteriority, in R. Surdulescu. The Raping of Identity.Pp. 92-102.

Week 14:  Everyday Pressures and Their Symbolic Function

Readings: Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant. “Symbolic Violence”, in Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois (eds.). Violence in War and Peace. Pp. 272-274. Pierre Bourdieu. “Gender and Symbolic Violence”, in Violence in War and Peace. Pp. 339-342. Stefan Stanciugelu. Violenta, mit si revolutie. Pp. 88-95.                                                           

BIBLIOGRAPHY

  • Thomas Arciszewski, e.a. From psychology of terrorists to psychology of terrorism, in  Revue internationale de psychologie sociale, 2009/3 (Tome 22).
  • Arendt, Hannah. “Reflections on Violence”, in The New York Review of Books, February 27, 1969.
  • Bourdieu, Pierre. “Gender and Symbolic Violence”, in Violence in War and Peace (London: Blackwell Publishing, 2000).
  • Bourdieu, Pierre, and Wacquant, Loïc. “Symbolic Violence”, in Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois (eds.), in Violence in War and Peace.
  • Caruth, Cathy. Introduction I;   Introduction II, in Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Ed. Cathy Caruth), (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1995).
  • Cesereanu, Ruxandra. Panopticum – Tortura politic` [n secolul XX (Ia]i: Institutul European, 2001).
  • De la Corte, Luis. Explaining Terrorism: A Psychosocial Approach, in Perspectives on Terrorism, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2007.           
  • Durkheim, Émile. Suicide: A Study in Sociology: Editor’s Introduction (Routledge, 2002)
  • Girard, René. Violence and the Sacred.  (Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989)
  • Gould, Thomas. “The Uses of Violence in Drama”, in James Redmond (ed.). Themes in Drama, no. 13.
  • Hughes, Ted. “The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar”, in Ted Hughes. New Selected Poems 1957-1994 (London: Faber & Faber, 1995).
  • Kolk, Bessel van der & Hart, Onno van der. “The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma”, in Cathy Caruth (ed.). Trauma: Explorations in Memory.                              
  • Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince (Chapters 8, 17, 21,25), (CreateSpace, 2014).
  • Popper, Karl. “Utopia and Violence”, in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (London: Routledge  & Kegan Paul, 1976) -pp. 355-363.
  • Pei-ying Wu. “Visual Representations of Violence” (Uccello, Goya, Picasso). Web 2 October 2019: https://docplayer.net/22324933-Visual-representations-of-violence-in-the-visual-arts.html
  • Siebers, Tobin. “Philosophy and Its Other – Violence”. Web 1 March, 2019: http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0102/siebers.htm
  • Singh, Birinder Pal. Problem of Violence  (Indian Institute of Advanced Study,  Rashtrapati Nivas, Shimla, 1999). 
  • Stanciugelu, Stefan. Violenta, mit si revolutie (Bucuresti: Editura ALL, 1998).                                                           
  • Surdulescu, Radu. The Raping of Identity (Ia]i: Institutul European, 2006).
  • Weber, Samuel. ‘Wartime’, in De Vries, Hent and Weber, Samuel eds, Violence, Identity and Self-Determination (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1997).
  • Wieviorka, Michel. La violence  (Paris: Éditions Balland, 2004).

REQUIREMENTS AND EVALUATION 

  • A minimum of 50% attendance.
  • Active participation in class debates (25% of the final grade).
  • A written essay and a written test (75%).