Thresholds of Atrocity: Liberal Violence and the Politics of Moral Vision
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2017 Thresholds of Atrocity: Liberal Violence and the Politics of Moral Vision Kristofer J. Petersen-Overton The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1836 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] THRESHOLDS OF ATROCITY: LIBERAL VIOLENCE AND THE POLITICS OF MORAL VISION by KRISTOFER JENS PETERSEN-OVERTON A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Political Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2017 Copyright 2016 KRISTOFER JENS PETERSEN-OVERTON All Rights Reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Political Science in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Professor Carol Gould ____________________ _____________________________ Date Chair of the Examining Committee Professor Alyson Cole ____________________ _____________________________ Date Executive Officer Professor Rosalind P. Petchesky _____________________________ Supervisory Committee Professor Uday S. Mehta _____________________________ Supervisory Committee CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT THRESHOLDS OF ATROCITY: LIBERAL VIOLENCE AND THE POLITICS OF MORAL VISION by Kristofer Jens Petersen-Overton Adviser: Professor Carol Gould All political communities set normative limits to the acceptable use of force. A threshold of atrocity indicates the point at which acceptable violence meets the boundaries of the unacceptable. In liberal democratic states such norms are ostensibly set higher. Hence, there is a theoretical threshold to the modern state’s ability to act in ways that violate norms it claims to uphold. Paradoxically, thresholds of atrocity are almost never breached and unconscionable violence occurs regularly. This study seeks to explain the persistence of extreme violence by developing a theory of atrocity grounded in moral vision. Liberal democratic nation-states are able to commit atrocities because they obscure these acts literally and metaphorically. Disguising violence in liberal democratic nation-states is further facilitated by the bureaucratic dispersion of responsibility characteristic of liberal nationalist ideology in particular, the conversion of liberal ideals into national myths, the mediation of moral information via a compliant news media system, and the adoption of technological means of violence that are inherently difficult to “see.” This raises an inescapable conclusion with radical normative implications: a great deal of the violence we presently tolerate as acceptable ought to instead be challenged as atrocious. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project has been with me for some time—well before the process of writing began— but it was certainly not born in a vacuum. Fortune has granted me the assistance of extraordinary intellectual mentors at the CUNY Graduate Center and, before that, Aalborg University and San Diego State University. Carol Gould has been an excellent adviser, mentor, and friend. Her feedback helped me to overcome multiple false starts and made this project much stronger than it would otherwise have been. Professor Gould also patiently endured the debilitating effects of personal crises on my productivity, offering nothing but encouragement throughout the process. I have also been very lucky to enjoy the support of my committee members, Rosalind Petchesky and Uday Mehta. It was in Professor Petchesky’s seminar on biopolitics that I first toyed with some of the key ideas developed herein and I am fortunate to count her as a friend and political ally. Likewise, an early draft of the second chapter of this dissertation was first written for a seminar with Professor Mehta, whose comments helped produce the present version. I owe additional thanks to Noam Chomsky, whose political commitments partly inspired my own concerns with state violence as an undergraduate. Professor Chomsky responded in great depth to numerous emails over the years and graciously agreed to meet for an interview during my research on this project. Norman Finkelstein encouraged me to think more about torture in an early incarnation of the third chapter and made some useful initial comments. A special acknowledgement should also be made for my undergraduate mentor, Farid Abdel-Nour, whose erudition and intellectual integrity are qualities I admired as an undergraduate and which I sought to emulate in pursuing a scholarly career of my own. It is a rare thing to encounter someone who exerts an influence of such magnitude that it completely shifts the trajectory of one’s life. It was Farid who encouraged me to apply for admission to the CUNY Graduate v Center, a decision I have never once regretted. I should also thank Raji Sourani and the brave activists of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, who taught me so much about the intersection of my political and scholarly commitments, both of which saturate every page of this dissertation. Thanks to my partner, friend, lover, comrade, and mother of my daughter, Isabel Sobral Campos, who subjected my work to her keen editorial standards. Finally, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my parents, Charlotte and Mark Petersen-Overton, who have never offered anything less than absolute support for my personal and professional endeavors. They are the authors of my primary and true education, my παιδεία, and while the culmination of my formal studies has taken many years, it can only be described as an addendum to the excellent foundation my parents prepared for me. One hazard of preparing acknowledgements of this kind is the slow realization that it is impossible to sufficiently acknowledge every contribution. So many wonderful people, past and present, alive and deceased, supported my work in a multiplicity of ways, directly and indirectly, from personal conversations to Facebook threads. To the extent that my project achieves anything it sets out to do, these people bear a great deal of the responsibility. Among others, I am grateful for the advice, assistance, guidance, and friendship of Xhuli Agolli, Flannery Amdahl, Marshall Berman, Michael Busch, Michelle Chen, Alyson Cole, Margaret Cook, Jonas Ecke, Itay Eisinger, Jonathan Graubart, Lisa Hajjar, James Hoff, Tristan Husby, Humayun Kabir, Laleh Khalili, Tausif Khan, Zara Khan, Alexander Kolokotronis, Ilektra Mandragou, Frances Fox Piven, Kareem Rabie, Corey Robin, Daniel Rogers, Joe Rollins, Joshua Sperber, Jan Teurlings, Dov Waxman, and Susan Woodward. The responsibility for any errors and unfounded claims herein belongs to me alone. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................. v I. LOOKING: At the Threshold of Atrocity ............................................................................. 1 Unconscionable Violence ............................................................................................................... 1 The Spectre of Melos ...................................................................................................................... 5 Vision and the Civilizing Process ................................................................................................. 15 Thresholds of Atrocity .................................................................................................................. 24 II. ATTENDING: Vision and Violence in Levinas, Murdoch, and Weil ................................. 34 The Beastly Century ...................................................................................................................... 34 Blindness and Vision .................................................................................................................... 38 Moral Attention ............................................................................................................................. 45 Face To Face .................................................................................................................................. 52 Ego and the Original Position ....................................................................................................... 57 III. SEEING: The Nazi Holocaust as a Paradigm of Atrocity ................................................ 63 A Nazi Kind of Thing ................................................................................................................... 64 Paradigms of Atrocity ................................................................................................................... 75 Atrocity and Genocide .................................................................................................................. 82 Atrocity and Evil ........................................................................................................................... 91 A Touchstone of Victimization .................................................................................................... 99 IV. VIEWING: Atrocity in the Mass Media .......................................................................... 101 Knowledge