tealin | Girard Digest 10: Violence (Reply)

He’d never, ever, laid a finger on anyone. He’d always run rather than fight. And murder, now, surely murder was an absolute? You couldn’t commit 0.021 of a murder, could you?

It's time once again to redefine a word you thought you knew, for the purposes of understanding mimetic theory.

Most of us think of 'violence' as some variation on hitting someone with a baseball bat. This is, of course, violence. But sociologically, violence is a spectrum that includes blunt instrument trauma along with any sort of behaviour that robs from another human being the quality of life they might otherwise have achieved. So, breaking someone's legs with a baseball bat: definitely violence, as they now have to cope with a disability. It is also violence to deny someone access to basic needs, or to work upon someone's mind until they believe themselves unworthy of fulfilling those needs.

I can try to explain this all I like, but a far better writer than me embedded a decent exploration of the broader meaning of violence within one of my very favourite stories:

     'You can’t just go around killing people!'
     'Why Not? You Do.' The golem lowered his arm.
     'What?' said Moist. 'I do not! Who told you that?'
     'I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People,' said the golem calmly.
     'I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr. Pump. I may be—all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!'
     'No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded, And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr. Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Did Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr. Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.'
Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Moist von Lipwig was fairly indiscriminate with his acts of violence, but when this violence is organised systematically – racism, sexism, ageism, etc – then it is called structural violence. Structural violence has been much in the discourse lately, highlighted by the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements, among others. It is important to remember, though, that structural violence starts at home. It didn't spring up when a committee got together to decide, for example, that African Americans were disposable; it merely enshrines a pattern of individual acts of violence, and being thus enshrined gives them broader societal permission. And those acts of violence need not be shootings on the street or lynchings in backwoods Alabama: violence includes quiet everyday actions like denying someone clean drinking water, banning them from your swimming pool, or telling your children not to sit near them on the bus. I deny you a job with health benefits, and I 0.73 kill you.

Sociology uses this very broad definition of violence because it encompasses both the violent acts we commonly consider to be ‘violence’ and the hostile thoughts and feelings from which the violent acts progress. Understanding them as one phenomenon with varying degrees of expression gives a fuller picture of what’s going on. When a woman stabs her husband, we call her the ‘violent’ one, but when you understand that he has been emotionally abusing her for decades, the violence has been there all along, and the assault is only the latest evolution of it. Similarly, a man who has been propagating hatred of Muslims online does not only become ‘violent’ when he opens fire on a Christchurch mosque: he has been violent the whole time. If violent behaviours can be recognised for what they are and corrected before they turn into what we commonly think of as ‘violence,’ then loss of life and livelihood can be prevented. If violence is off our radar until it turns into physical violence, then it's too late.

Girard uses the term ‘violence’ for the animosity that arises from mimetic rivalry, which is either directed at one’s rival or transferred to some other opponent because violence within the rivalry is impermissible. It is important to remember that this means hatred, suspicion, undermining, ostracisation, and scorn as much as it does actual acts of physical violence. In many cases the physical violence only occurs long after the social violence has a secure foundation. An apple can only exist if there is an apple tree for it to grow from; just so, the acts we consider ‘violent’ grow from a structure of violence that does not necessarily resemble the fruit.

Girard Digest 11: Mimetic Violence