Histories of Violence (Page 2 of 4)

Ten Years of Terror: Michael Hardt

presented by Michael Hardt

What’s most sig­nif­i­cant about September 11th ten years on I think is the illu­sion that it cre­at­ed of the end of pol­i­tics. By the end of pol­i­tics I mean the notion that force could rule. That ter­ror could effectively…be suf­fi­cient for pow­er. And this was an illu­sion I think that was rec­og­niz­able at the time of September 11th but almost impos­si­ble to say. Almost impos­si­ble to say because of a vari­ety of con­di­tions of the dra­mat­ic nature of the event, and also of the forces of pow­er that are arraigned with it.

Ten Years of Terror: Michael Dillon

presented by Michael Dillon

Ten years of the War on Terror I think has to be locat­ed also in the con­text of more than ten years of lib­er­al wel­fare since 1989, and the dis­so­lu­tion of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War structures. 

Ten Years of Terror: Mary Kaldor

presented by Mary Kaldor

For me…human secu­ri­ty is say­ing an Afghan life is equal to a British life. And our secu­ri­ty is guar­an­teed by con­tribut­ing to a glob­al secu­ri­ty that treats all humans as equal. That’s some­thing very very dif­fi­cult for politi­cians to grasp. Partly because they still live in an old-fashioned world where they’re afraid if they use words like human secu­ri­ty” they’ll sound soft.

Ten Years of Terror: J. Peter Burgess

presented by J. Peter Burgess

Few con­cepts have seized our polit­i­cal imag­i­na­tion in the last decade like secu­ri­ty. Few con­cepts have mobi­lized us to engage so many extra­or­di­nary mea­sures, to ded­i­cate so much mon­ey, and to change the lives of so many peo­ple as secu­ri­ty. And the con­cept of secu­ri­ty has not at all remained sta­ble. It has­n’t remained at all aloof or untouched by this process.

Ten Years of Terror: Brad Evans

presented by Brad Evans

A decade on, the vio­lence of September the 11th, 2001 still haunts the lib­er­al imag­i­nary of threat. And I guess by this what I mean is that the vio­lence of that fate­ful day now under­writes all forms of lib­er­al secu­ri­ty gov­er­nance, glob­al­ly. And I think this in many ways is of course under­stand­able. I per­son­al­ly find myself some­times deeply trou­bled by that fate­ful predica­ment faced by those peo­ple who decid­ed to take their own lives on that hor­ri­fy­ing day. However in spite of this, I think our response rep­re­sents noth­ing short of a pro­found fail­ure of the polit­i­cal and the philo­soph­i­cal imagination. 

Violence & Art: An Interview with Robert Longo

presented by Robert Longo

America is dif­fer­ent than the rest of the coun­tries in the world because it’s the only coun­try I think that’s based upon the idea of team sport. Other coun­tries are based on race, reli­gion, tribe. The United States is the only coun­try in the world that’s based on the idea of a team. Because there’s all these diverse dif­fer­ent peo­ple, and we all work togeth­er for a goal. The prob­lem is that America, because it is a team, its main objec­tive is to win.

Disposable Life: Zygmunt Bauman

presented by Zygmunt Bauman

In pre-modern soci­eties there was no idea of waste; every­thing was going back into life—recycled, as we would say today. If there were more chil­dren com­ing into the world in a fam­i­ly, then obvi­ous­ly there was room for them, and extra work some­where in the farm­yard, in the field, in the sta­ble. And of course a place around the table. So the idea of being redun­dant, hav­ing no place in soci­ety, sim­ply did­n’t occur. 

Sentimental Violence

presented by John Steppling

Irony is like sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty, a kind of vio­lence to the form, to the nar­ra­tive. And in a sense, these days we prob­a­bly need a new term because irony is insuf­fi­cient. It is the post-ironic moment. It is very hard in a vocab­u­lary that has been so medi­at­ed and coopt­ed by mar­ket­ing, it is very hard for peo­ple to not be iron­ic, to not be snarky and sarcastic.

Disposable Life: David Theo Goldberg

presented by David Theo Goldberg

I’m not here going to think aloud about these var­i­ous con­tes­ta­to­ry forms of evidence-giving, although much might be said about that in rela­tion to think­ing about vio­lence. But rather to think about the Michael Brown shoot­ing in Ferguson, Missouri and the kinds of police response to it in rela­tion to the his­to­ry of vio­lence and the way in which race shapes said his­to­ry of vio­lence in a coun­try like the United States…

Disposable Life: Étienne Balibar

presented by Étienne Balibar

It’s not the case of course that any con­tem­po­rary philoso­pher or pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy has been par­tic­u­lar­ly deal­ing with ques­tions of polit­i­cal the­o­ry. I nev­er thought about vio­lence. But I want to recall the moment in which I specif­i­cal­ly start­ed to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly work on that.