Violence as a spectrum
Violence as a spectrum?
To begin discussing a spectrum of violence, a series of questions must first be resolved, questions that might arise from the very assertion of such a spectrum’s existence; therefore, it is appropriate to start with a defining framework.
To define violence, the most appropriate first step would be to distinguish it from aggressiveness, which is erroneously used as a synonym for violence. Aggressiveness, according to Sanmartín (2007, p. 9), is purely biological; it is an innate response or behaviour to certain stimuli that ceases in the presence of specific inhibitors. On the other hand, he defines violence as “aggressiveness altered, primarily, by the action of sociocultural factors that remove its automatic character and turn it into intentional and harmful conduct” (Sanmartín 2007, p. 9). However, referring to violence as a substitute for “intentional conduct that causes or may cause harm” (Sanmartín 2007, p. 9) constitutes a whitewashing, whether intentional or not, of systemic violence. Violence tends to be misunderstood on various occasions as a single direct element of intentional aggressiveness, whether verbal or physical, aimed at damaging the personal, physical, or moral integrity of an individual or collective. Yet we must not underestimate the capacities of the more subtle forms of violence within our cultural systems. There are various subtle forms of coercion that impose relations of domination and exploitation (Žižek 2017, p. 17), which shape and in some way legitimise the capitalist system. Furthermore, the main concern of the tolerant liberalism that predominates today is opposition to all forms of violence (Žižek 2017, p. 17). However, as Žižek (2017, p. 17) rightly suggests, this seems more like a “desperate attempt to distract our attention from the authentic problem”: systemic or systematic violence, not forgetting, of course, state violence.
This violence is fundamental to the capitalist system and plays on the common board with the advantage that we can no longer attribute this violence to specific individuals or subjectively evil intentions; rather, it is completely objective, systemic, and anonymous (Žižek 2017, p. 20). Systemic violence, indeed, cannot be attributed to a specific individual, “but finds its roots in a sociocultural system that generates its material conditions of possibility, gives it meaning, and conceals it” (Pérez and Fernández 2022, p. 6), being exercised through various normative practices and discourses that ultimately result in “harming subordinated groups” (Pérez and Fernández 2022, p. 6). What has been defined here explains why it is a mistake to define violence solely as intentional conduct: violence can be passive and, moreover, needs to be passive in order to continuously legitimate itself. Even if we start from an idea of violence based on the avoidability of harm, violence becomes naturalised and considered inevitable by taking refuge in elements such as culture, tradition, or common sense (Pérez and Fernández 2022, p. 6). Furthermore, as we have already said, this violence cannot be attributed to a specific individual, and this implies breaking with the perpetrator-victim binary to focus our attention also on passive violence based on silence, applause, and complicity (Pérez and Fernández 2022, p. 6), all of which allow for the maintenance and even advancement of intrinsically violent dynamics.
After this definition, the main question arises: why a spectrum? Because violence functions, simultaneously, as both an umbrella concept and a social construct. Within the realm of the collective imagination (which is also, curiously, a social construct), we understand social constructs as cultural results of social processes, as fruits of the generation of norms outside of nature, built on the basis of beliefs, traditions, and customs. They are also a way of defining certain notions and symbols that we attach to objects, events, or characteristics. However, social constructs do not draw lines or boundaries, and they become confused with natural or innate elements (whether conveniently or not), even if they do not faithfully represent the reality of people’s experience within a culture or society. Having raised this issue with social constructs, we understand a simplified way of grasping them and distinguishing them from the innate: how the passage of time affects them. The general notions of what violence was and what violence is now have evolved vertiginously over time. What was once considered natural, innate, or inevitable is now categorised as yet another form of violence within the broad repertoire of concepts. For example, systematic violence exercised against women because of their condition as women was considered a natural act within a system that placed men as their owners, because it seemed obvious that this was the way to act upon an object that one possesses. Today, although we have not yet freed ourselves from this scourge, it has been denaturalised and the concept of gender violence has been coined to understand these systematic violences and their expressions.
Understanding violence as a social construct, we can now indeed apply it to a spectrum. Violence cannot be limited to being observed as a specific set of values, each one separate from the others; rather, it must be understood as a value in itself, which can be observed in its totality, comprising an evolution that is not limited but exists through a continuum. Within this spectrum, and for the purposes of the following chapters of this research, we will observe that continuum starting from state violence, systematic violence, and all the drifts of these two, understanding them as diffuse roots.
Subtlety and systematization.
In general, when subtle violence is discussed, it tends to refer to psychological violence exercised in romantic relationships with the aim of undermining a partner’s self-esteem or self-perception. However, here we will use it as a way of referring to those systemic violences that are so subtle that they are not usually understood as violence by the general public. For example, it took a very long time to begin referring to various aspects of care for women giving birth as obstetric violence, because these were violences so naturalised, even by women themselves, that they were not categorised as such.
We will begin here by discussing state violence. Max Weber (1920) defined the state as the “monopoly of violence”, and this definition is, in turn, one of the necessary characteristics for a state to define itself as such. The words he uses to define it are that an organism is “a state to the extent that its administrative team successfully maintains a claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence in the execution of its order” (Weber 1920). Moreover, it is not only that the state possesses this monopoly and can exercise it, using the State Security Forces and Corps for this purpose, but also that different individuals and/or organisations may make use of this violence under the permission and legitimacy that the state itself can grant them, using regulation through laws on the use of violence by citizens.
However, one might understand from this that the regulation of violence does not necessarily imply its application by the state organism itself, but this statement would be completely erroneous. The foundations of states, especially after the two world wars and becoming much more latent since the Cold War and after the disintegration of the USSR, are shaped by coercion and the continued use of violence.
“The transit from one [the bipolar world] to the other [the global world] has also involved a significant and differentiated use of violence that is articulated with new forms of the political, the social, and the subjective” (Calveiro 2012, p. 14).
The systematisation of violence is a direct part of the system and constitutes the main supporting pillar of the entire system. Without the use of violence and without maintaining its monopoly, it would be complex for the system not only to maintain its status quo but also to maintain the economic benefit of capital.
The invisible, the uncondemned.
And all this violence, largely sustained under our relatively new systems of transparent society (which we will discuss below), remains invisible to our eyes. How can it be that we are unable to see all the violence applied against us?
Byung-Chul Han (2012) defined our current society as a “positive society” that pursues an equality of understanding, a transparent society that suppresses any negativity so that activism becomes a commodity empty of significations. A clear example of this can be found in Pride Month, which has been transformed through capitalist mechanisms into an event devoid of political demands. This transparent society does not allow for a negativity that questions the existing system; it is completely blind to what lies outside the system. Byung-Chul Han (2012) also sets out two fundamental characteristics of transparent society: first, our complete exposure and, second, evidence. In this case, we are interested in discussing exposure, which must be complete and continuous: we are required to surrender everything to visibility, to make everything lose its cultural value and its meaning. That is, the system functions by suppressing all social and cultural actions under transparent homogeneity, but it also functions by taking advantage of this very transparency. In this sense, one must understand the layers of transparency and their way of becoming opaque. The state no longer needs to hide information. Moreover, it can be completely open and transparent, because everything is so open and transparent that we are saturated with information and images. So much transparent information and so many transparent images generate a tangle that obscures, that prevents us from seeing. Therefore, the only action the system must take is to redirect all superfluous information towards us, obscuring the action and violence of the system through layers and layers of information. Systematic violence is more difficult to condemn because it is more difficult to see, to find. But it is there, it is among all of us. However, as we discussed earlier, this violence remains anonymous, so it is more complex to point out. This, nevertheless, does not prevent the creation of social, collective, and horizontal movements that, step by step, make it possible to denounce all this systematic, invisible, and uncondemned violence.
