The Concealment of Violence in the History of Fencing: Semantics, Codification, and Deterritorialization
The Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence Vol. II, Issue 2/2018 © The Authors 2018 Available online at http://trivent-publishing.eu/ The Concealment of Violence in the History of Fencing: Semantics, Codification, and Deterritorialization Elise Defrasne Ait-Said Cognition and Action Group (UMR 8257, Université Paris-Descartes), France Abstract: Depending on historical periods and individual perspectives, fencing has been defined in various ways. Indeed, fencing has been regarded as an art, and/or a science, and/or a sport, and/or a game. This paper shows that those various attempts to define fencing throughout history are strategies aiming to conceal the founding violence of fencing (although these strategies do not prevent the emergence of further forms of violence). The study demonstrates that these strategies pertain to semantics, to regulation and codification of fencing, and to more recent phenomena which are linked to the deterritorialization of the practice of fencing. Keywords: Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly; Gilles Deleuze; Roger Caillois; Deterritorialization; Duelling; Fencing; Game; History; Sport; Violence. The PJCV Journal is published by Trivent Publishing. This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0) license, which permits others to copy or share the article, provided original work is properly cited and that this is not done for commercial purposes. Users may not remix, transform, or build upon the material and may not distribute the modified material (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) The Concealment of Violence in the History of Fencing: Semantics, Codification, and Deterritorialization Elise Defrasne Ait-Said Cognition and Action Group (UMR 8257, Université Paris-Descartes), France Abstract: Depending on historical periods and individual perspectives, fencing has been defined in various ways.
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