The violence that keeps the fight against violence alive

The final thought of Slavoj Žižek’s book Violence is that the greatest violence may sometimes lie in doing nothing. The book’s discussion of violence develops this idea through the philosopher’s familiar, globally recognized theory, but the review argues that the work remains genuinely strong despite its dense intellectual machinery.

For the reviewer, the book’s first strength is its ability to address complex questions while repeatedly turning them around dialectically. In those reversals, the questions often appear more important than the answers. A second strength is Žižek’s ability to place well-known theories in perspectives that still feel original. The third is his encyclopedic knowledge, presented with the force of a volcanic eruption, yet also restrained as though the author were confronting that same volcano in the manner of Empedocles.

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keeps attempts to fight violence alive and promotes tolerance

Žižek compares subjective violence with a form of violence that keeps attempts to fight violence alive while promoting tolerance. The review illustrates the argument with a story about a worker suspected of stealing factory materials because he left each day with a wheelbarrow. Investigators repeatedly found nothing, until they realized that the wheelbarrows themselves were the objects being stolen, not what they carried.

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from the 16th-century tragedy in Mexico to the Holocaust in the Belgian Congo a century ago

The book distinguishes among subjective, objective and symbolic violence. Subjective and objective violence cannot be perceived from the same standpoint, because subjective violence appears against a background assumed to be a nonviolent zero point. Žižek argues that objective violence takes on a new form under capitalism. Drawing on Marx, he presents material production and the self-propelling metaphysical movement of capital as necessary to understanding social interaction, the development of society and catastrophes in real life.

The review contrasts the clear attribution of communist crimes with the lack of responsibility assigned to millions killed by capitalist globalization, from the 16th-century tragedy in Mexico to the Holocaust in the Belgian Congo a century ago. It then points to Davos and Porto Alegre as twin sites of globalization, one hosting the global managerial elite and the other the “counter-elite” of the anti-globalization movement. Some figures from Porto Alegre, the review notes, later moved to Davos as entrepreneurs calling themselves liberal communists.

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counter-elite of the anti-globalization movement