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Throwback to Violence? Dominique Linhardt, Cédric Moreau De Bellaing

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Throwback to Violence? Dominique Linhardt, Cédric Moreau De Bellaing Throwback to Violence? Dominique Linhardt, Cédric Moreau de Bellaing To cite this version: Dominique Linhardt, Cédric Moreau de Bellaing. Throwback to Violence?: Outline for a Process- Sociological Approach to “Terror” and “Terrorism”. Florence Delmotte; Barbara Górnicka. Norbert Elias in Troubled Times: Figurational Approaches to the Problems of the 21st Century, Palgrave Macmillan, In press, Palgrave Studies on Norbert Elias. hal-03101486 HAL Id: hal-03101486 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03101486 Submitted on 7 Jan 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. A THROWBACK TO VIOLENCE? Outline for a process-sociological approac to !terror" and !terrorism" Dominique Linhardt & Cédric Moreau de Bellaing Intro#uction Norbert Elias has repeatedly asserted that fear of danger should be regarded as a regular thread in human history. Thereby! variations in history relate to changes in the #ays members of human societies strive to cope #ith the dangers they face and the fears they instill in them. $n this respect! Elias holds the vie# that social de"elopment has been mar%ed by significant advances in %no#ledge and thus in the control of calamities a'ecting human beings. This #ould e(plain the relationship of more advanced societies to#ards nature) the resigned acceptance distinctive of less de"eloped societies has gradually given #ay to an intention and a capacity to manage natural phenomena and the scourges associated #ith them. By contrast! he obser"es! the dangers arising from social organization itself ha"e not yet brought about a comparable le"el of insight and mastery) in the face of the cruelties that nations! groups! and individuals still inflict on each other! human societies ha"e scarcely got beyond the stage of fatalism ,Elias -./01. Contrary to #hat some critics of his theory of the civilizing process ha"e implied! Elias #as perfectly clear-sighted on this matter) far from any coarse self2celebration of a dominating 3est to #hich his #or% has occasionally been assimilated ,e.g. Duerr -.//1! he felt that 4our descendants! if humanity can survi"e the violence of our age! might consider us as late barbarians5 ,Elias -./.! 0678691. 3ith these fe# #ords! Elias is pic%ing up t#o essential tenets of his theory of the civilizing process. :irstly! he reminds us that since the civilizing process has neither beginning nor end! any progress made by human%ind is al#ays doomed to accommodate the ills it has not yet o"ercome. That is #hy e"ery social type perceives the one immediately preceding it as the last representative of the barbaric times! and #ill be seen in the same manner by the one #ho succeeds it. This general obser"ation also applies to us #ho are living in societies that! as Elias points out a fe# lines abo"e in the same te(t! tend to o"ervalue the bene&ts of a 4modernity5 that #e like to identify #ith. $n picturing the distant horizon of the 4possible de"elopment of human%ind5 ,Elias -./.! 0671! Elias dra#s attention to the fact that there is no reason to thin% that the civilizational stage #e ha"e reached protects us from the destructive potential that #e continue to cultivate in the #ay #e beha"e to#ards each other. But Elias does not stic% to that &rst teaching. ;ssuming that #e may not 4survive the violence of our age5! he secondly suggests that our situation could! in some #ay! e"en be more - desperate than in the past! for if the societies that preceded ours did not bring about the self2 destruction of humanity! this ris% no# constitutes a reality #e cannot a"oid confronting. - This observation of a threat of destruction that increases #hile the civilizing process mo"es for#ard cannot be adequately understood by attributing violence e(clusively to #hat the civilizing process has not yet been able to perform and secure at a given moment. <ome part of the violence of the present cannot be reduced to it= this part is constituti"e of a type of violence that can be described as regressive in the specific sense that it &(es itself on the civilizing process! is formed from it and in reaction to it and! as such! proceeds from it as much as it opposes it. This is the "ery idea behind the notion of 4brea%do#n of civilization5 put into play by Elias in his Studies on the Germans ,Elias -..71. $nsofar as some le"el of civilization has to be in order for it to collapse! this type of violence in"olves more than a simple re"ersal) it requires a negation! the nature of #hich needs to be elucidated. Commentators of Elias>s #or% ha"e! of course! not failed to notice this point! so that the possibility of the coe(istence! the synchronicity of progressive and regressive trends #ithin e"olving social &gurations! is no# #idely recognized! e"en if the interpretations and e(planations given to it may differ ,Bur%itt -..7= Dépelteau ?@-9= Dunning and Mennell -../= Arie%en -...= <#aan ?@@-1. The follo#ing outline is in %eeping #ith these considerations. $n this regard! it is aimed at t#o obBectives. The &rst is to pinpoint the social mechanisms that foster the occurrence of these regressive forms of violence. The second is to provide a basis for the hypothesis that the latter are most distincti"ely e(pressed through the e(perience of 4terror5 and 4terrorism5 that societies ha"e been #itnessing since the nineteenth and! at an accelerating pace! the t#entieth centuries. These notions are not to be understood in the narro# sense that prevails in common parlance. ;s a preliminary de&nition, #e suggest adopting the one given by Michael 3al*er. Cnder the term 4terrorism5! the latter groups together forms of violence that ha"e the characteristic of 4resembling5 acts of #ar! but infringe and sub"ert its 4political code5 as it has been enforced in the course of modernity and methodized in the la#s of #ar ,3al*er -.99! -.98?@71. $n this sense! the notions of 4terror5 and 4terrorism5 refer to a #ide range of acts of violence! perpetrated by both state and non- state actors! that! in sum! give the conflicts of the t#entieth century their distincti"e shape! particularly in terms of the dramatic increase in civilian casualties.? They include the 1. Elias has pointed to the ris% of a nuclear holocaust in this regard. 3ith the end of the Cold 3ar! the imminence of this threat may no# seem to ha"e diminished. $t should ne"ertheless be recalled that the nuclear disarmament and non2proliferation programs conducted o"er the past forty years ha"e not pre"ented the persistence of atomic arsenals that are more than suDcient to eradicate all life on earth se"eral times o"er. :urthermore! it is reasonable to assume that Elias! if he had had to deal #ith the changes that ha"e ta%en place since the end of the 1980s! #ould ha"e been interested in the threat arising from the ecological crisis and #ould certainly ha"e refrained from interpreting global #arming or the e(tinction of the Eolocene as mere steps bac%#ards! as if humanity #ere once again the obBect of the fury of a nature that is e(ternal to it. $t is rather more li%ely! con"ersely! that he #ould ha"e ta%en full measure of the anthropogenic nature of a transformation #hich, in its causes as #ell as in its possible consequences! including the threat of e(treme "iolence of #hich it could become the issue! not only a'ects humanity! but concerns it for the &rst time in history as an integral part of life processes that run through, encompass and o"er+o# it. 2. is does not mean that these "iolent con+icts and the actors #ho engage in them should be assimilated! that the crime of the Na*is against the Fe#s #ould be of similar magnitude and signi&cance to acts of torture ? indiscriminate use of bombs and bombings! practices of abduction and deportation, of rape and torture! the perpetration of pogroms and mass %illings! the setting up of concentration and e(termination camps—to mention but some elements of the nefarious set of techniques that states and! to some e(tent! other violence entrepreneurs #ho see% to catch up #ith them! put at the service of strategies of hatred that feed the skandalon of e(treme violence as the modern #orld has seen it and still sees it today. %rimar& an# secondar& 'ar'aris$ $n a footnote at the beginning of the Studies on the Germans ,Elias -..7! HHH8H01! Elias points out the difference bet#een the 4genocide in the -.6@s and 1940s5 and 4acts of mass destruction5 in a more distant past that! #ithout being 4identical to those of the National <ocialists5! are 4ne"ertheless similar in certain respects5 and correspond to 4#hat #e no# call genocide5—the e(ample given by Elias being the siege of Melos and the subsequent massacre perpetrated by the ;thenians in H-7 and H-0 BC.6 ;ccording to him! the difference lies essentially in the fact that! in the &rst case! the treatment inflicted on the Melians #as perceived as 4normal5! #hereas in the second! the 4standards of human behaviour5 that had de"eloped o"er the centuries in Europe made the crimes committed by the National <ocialists to 4appear abhorrent! and IJK regarded #ith spontaneous feelings of horror5.
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