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buddhafish 's review for:
On Violence
by Hannah Arendt
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.
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*
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.
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*
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.