Violence before Identity

An Analysis of Identity Politics

Bibliographic Data

ID3580904
AuthorsGlenn Bowman (0000-0002-6521-4363, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume62
Issue2_suppl
Pages152-165
Publication date2014-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/1467-954x.12195
OpenAlexW1961852920
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited22

Violence is a force for creating integrities as well as one that violates, pollutes and destroys already existing entities. In this paper I address the role of what Ariella Azoulay terms the 'political imagination' in constituting social aggregates committed to the defence of a community itself brought into being by the imagining of a force dedicated to its destruction. Such a group's perception of what Laclau and Mouffe call an 'antagonism' spurs it to mark out and defend its boundaries with violence - a violence often manifested aggressively (pre-emptively). Collective perceptions of an other's antagonism are often overdetermined, either by historical memory or political manipulation, and it is often the case that an enemy is sited and a programme of 'defensive' violence inaugurated without any 'real' justification. Here I demonstrate, using events drawn from the formation of the State of Israel and the collapse of what is now 'Former Yugoslavia', that it is in designating an other against which destructive violence must be mobilized that an entity realizes - through the negation of that it would negate - what it is it fights to defend

Adversary · Aesthetics · Collective identity · Computer security · Criminology · Identity (music) · Negation · Overdetermined system · Political science · Political violence · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science) · Computer Science · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Philosophy

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