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3.53 AVERAGE
3.53 AVERAGE
Muchas definiciones y distinciones entre poder, autoridad y violencia. Aunque si veo porque la criticaban de racista
Hannah Arendt, a partir de la revisión de pensadores y teóricos vinculados al fenómeno de la violencia, reflexiona y ahonda acerca de las características de las cuales está investida la violencia en el siglo XX. Una autora que nos entrega un interesante repaso teórico que, mediante la clave puesta en los instrumentos y el desarrollo tecnológico trepidante que ha vivido la humanidad en pocas décadas, nos recuerda que las matrices filosóficas y políticas de los siglos XVIII-XIX, han quedado relegadas e incluso en desuso para comprender las consecuencias globales del ejercicio de la violencia en la época de las guerras mundiales.
Arendt toma como contrapunto al concepto de poder, entendido este como a "la capacidad humana...para actuar concertadamente" (44), con el objetivo de diferenciar el concepto de violencia, comprendido partir de "su carácter instrumental" (46), todo esto bajo la necesidad de contar con conceptos diferenciados y actualizados para comprender las lógicas de dominación del humano por el humano, atendiendo el contexto global del siglo XX. Autoridad, totalitarismo, gobierno, legitimidad y fuerza son solo algunos de los términos que emergen en este libro, que nos ayudan a explorar, a partir de las particularidades del pensamiento de Arendt, los efectos que provoca en las sociedades el uso de la violencia política.
Sin embargo, debe leerse contextualizadamente, debido a que los mismos conceptos que en este texto trabaja Arendt fueron desarrollados posteriormente por Foucault, logrando una mirada mucho más amplia y profunda, ideas que aún resuenan en la actualidad.
Un libro que nos acerca a fenómenos e ideas que de una u otra manera nos convocan. Ya sea por la atemporal presencia de la violencia en la vida humana desde sus orígenes, como así también por la urgente necesidad de contar con conceptos alojados y justificados en exhaustivas matrices de pensamiento, que nos permitan mejorar la calidad de los debates y diálogos públicos y privados en torno a este tema, y aquellos que se derivan.
"Los que se oponen a la violencia con el simple poder pronto descubrirán que se enfrentan no con hombres sino con artefactos de los hombres, cuya inhumanidad y eficacia destructiva aumenta en proporción a la distancia que separa a los oponentes"(54)
"Una de las distinciones más obvias entre poder y violencia es que el poder siempre precisa el número, mientras que la violencia, hasta cierto punto, puede prescindir del número porque descansa en sus instrumentos" (42)
"Usar de la razón cuando la razón es empleada como trampa no es racional"(66)
Arendt toma como contrapunto al concepto de poder, entendido este como a "la capacidad humana...para actuar concertadamente" (44), con el objetivo de diferenciar el concepto de violencia, comprendido partir de "su carácter instrumental" (46), todo esto bajo la necesidad de contar con conceptos diferenciados y actualizados para comprender las lógicas de dominación del humano por el humano, atendiendo el contexto global del siglo XX. Autoridad, totalitarismo, gobierno, legitimidad y fuerza son solo algunos de los términos que emergen en este libro, que nos ayudan a explorar, a partir de las particularidades del pensamiento de Arendt, los efectos que provoca en las sociedades el uso de la violencia política.
Sin embargo, debe leerse contextualizadamente, debido a que los mismos conceptos que en este texto trabaja Arendt fueron desarrollados posteriormente por Foucault, logrando una mirada mucho más amplia y profunda, ideas que aún resuenan en la actualidad.
Un libro que nos acerca a fenómenos e ideas que de una u otra manera nos convocan. Ya sea por la atemporal presencia de la violencia en la vida humana desde sus orígenes, como así también por la urgente necesidad de contar con conceptos alojados y justificados en exhaustivas matrices de pensamiento, que nos permitan mejorar la calidad de los debates y diálogos públicos y privados en torno a este tema, y aquellos que se derivan.
"Los que se oponen a la violencia con el simple poder pronto descubrirán que se enfrentan no con hombres sino con artefactos de los hombres, cuya inhumanidad y eficacia destructiva aumenta en proporción a la distancia que separa a los oponentes"(54)
"Una de las distinciones más obvias entre poder y violencia es que el poder siempre precisa el número, mientras que la violencia, hasta cierto punto, puede prescindir del número porque descansa en sus instrumentos" (42)
"Usar de la razón cuando la razón es empleada como trampa no es racional"(66)
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
"el monopolio del poder produce la desecación de todas las fuentes de poder de una nación"
This was a really great work of political theory by Arendt. It explores violence, mostly through the lens of the 1960s when she was writing this book. It looks at the student rebellions across the world, in both democracies and communist countries. The coincidence of the uprisings is interesting, and she posits that they are both protesting for the same reason, albeit in different manifestations. Students around the world were looking for freedom. The students in communist countries were looking for freedom to express themselves through both speech and action and thereby have an effect on the processes and progress of their respective countries. The students in the Western democracies were protesting their lack of freedom in action. They protested the lack of agency they felt. Both sets of students felt impotent and unimportant, as if they entirely didn't count, and decided to protest against it.
Some of the most impacting quotes for me:
"Rage is by no means an automatic reaction to misery and suffering as such; no one reacts with rage to an incurable disease or to an earthquake or, for that matter, to social conditions that seem to be unchangeable. Only where there is reason to suspect that conditions could be changed and are not does rage arise. Only when our sense of justice is offended do we react with rage, and this reaction by no means necessarily reflects personal injury, as is demonstrated by the whole history of injury, as is demonstrated by the whole history of revolution, where invariably members of the upper classes touched off and then led the rebellions of the oppressed and downtrodden."
"Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance... Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it."
"Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime is the best excuse for doing nothing."
"Racism, white or black, is fraught with violence by definition because it objects to natural organic facts - a white or black skin - which no persuasion or power could change; all one can do, when the chips are down, is to exterminate their bearers. Racism, as distinguished from race, is not a fact of life, but an ideology, and the deeds it leads to are not reflex actions, but deliberate acts based on pseudo-scientific theories. Violence in interracial struggle is always murderous, but it is not "irrational"; it is the logical and rational consequence of racism, by which I do not mean some rather vague prejudices on either side, but an explicit ideological system."
"The technical development of the implements of violence has now reached the point where no political goal could conceivably correspond to their destructive potential or justify their actual use in armed conflict."
I'm thinking about more right now, but I haven't found the best way to express it yet. I want to write about the way the book made me think differently about how Americans were celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden, and what this says about us and the war on terror. So I'll probably be editing this in the future to add some about this, using a few of the quotes above, and maybe some others.
Some of the most impacting quotes for me:
"Rage is by no means an automatic reaction to misery and suffering as such; no one reacts with rage to an incurable disease or to an earthquake or, for that matter, to social conditions that seem to be unchangeable. Only where there is reason to suspect that conditions could be changed and are not does rage arise. Only when our sense of justice is offended do we react with rage, and this reaction by no means necessarily reflects personal injury, as is demonstrated by the whole history of injury, as is demonstrated by the whole history of revolution, where invariably members of the upper classes touched off and then led the rebellions of the oppressed and downtrodden."
"Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance... Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it."
"Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime is the best excuse for doing nothing."
"Racism, white or black, is fraught with violence by definition because it objects to natural organic facts - a white or black skin - which no persuasion or power could change; all one can do, when the chips are down, is to exterminate their bearers. Racism, as distinguished from race, is not a fact of life, but an ideology, and the deeds it leads to are not reflex actions, but deliberate acts based on pseudo-scientific theories. Violence in interracial struggle is always murderous, but it is not "irrational"; it is the logical and rational consequence of racism, by which I do not mean some rather vague prejudices on either side, but an explicit ideological system."
"The technical development of the implements of violence has now reached the point where no political goal could conceivably correspond to their destructive potential or justify their actual use in armed conflict."
I'm thinking about more right now, but I haven't found the best way to express it yet. I want to write about the way the book made me think differently about how Americans were celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden, and what this says about us and the war on terror. So I'll probably be editing this in the future to add some about this, using a few of the quotes above, and maybe some others.
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
43rd book of 2024.
So starts On Violence, which Arendt wrote between 1967-69. Though short, it is riddled with quotations and explorations from a number of other sources, such as Marx, Sartre, Fanon, and Chomsky. Her main line of thought seems to be in detangling the idea that power and violence are synonymous; Arendt believes, on the contrary, they are opposites. I found her idea interesting that violence is the result of failing power*. She does, state however, that violence can destroy power, whilst also being 'incapable of creating it'. In one brilliant portion of the essay, Arendt asks, 'Who are they, this new generation?' and answers her own question with, 'Those who hear ticking'. As Spender calls the future, 'a time-bomb buried'. This is very of its time, post-WW2, and in the middle of the Cold War, but it is true of today too. As she writes on the very first page (partially quoting, too, Harvey Wheeler),
An interesting read, though at times a little bogged down with the insistent quoting. The argument could have been tighter, but the last few pages where she begins to conclude some ideas, are worthwhile. Sadly, she also leaves lots unanswered and unexplored.
___________________
*
These reflections were provoked by the events and debates of the last few years as seen against the background of the twentieth century, which has become, indeed, as Lenin predicted, a century of wars and revolutions, hence a century of that violence which is currently believed to be their common denominator.
So starts On Violence, which Arendt wrote between 1967-69. Though short, it is riddled with quotations and explorations from a number of other sources, such as Marx, Sartre, Fanon, and Chomsky. Her main line of thought seems to be in detangling the idea that power and violence are synonymous; Arendt believes, on the contrary, they are opposites. I found her idea interesting that violence is the result of failing power*. She does, state however, that violence can destroy power, whilst also being 'incapable of creating it'. In one brilliant portion of the essay, Arendt asks, 'Who are they, this new generation?' and answers her own question with, 'Those who hear ticking'. As Spender calls the future, 'a time-bomb buried'. This is very of its time, post-WW2, and in the middle of the Cold War, but it is true of today too. As she writes on the very first page (partially quoting, too, Harvey Wheeler),
The 'apocalyptic' chess game between the superpowers, that is, between those that move on the highest plane of our civilisation, is being played according to the rule 'if either "wins" it is the end of both'; it is a game that bears no resemblance to whatever war games proceeded it.
An interesting read, though at times a little bogged down with the insistent quoting. The argument could have been tighter, but the last few pages where she begins to conclude some ideas, are worthwhile. Sadly, she also leaves lots unanswered and unexplored.
___________________
*
Rule by sheer violence comes into play where power is being lost; it is precisely the shrinking power of the Russian government, internally and externally, that became manifest in its 'solution' of the Czechoslovak problem - just as it was the shrinking power of European imperialism that became manifest in the alternative between decolonisation and massacre. To substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power.
reflective
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced