Democracy and Violence

Abstract

I have argued that in order to theorize violence it is necessary to consider not only the contingent/historical character of particular expressions of violence, but also the more permanent/meta-historical character of social identities. It is thus necessary to look not only at the identities already constituted, but at the very process of constitution of social identities. Only then is it possible to see the schism (and exclusion) that is inherent in every social identity. This schism between the particular (the empirico/profane) and the universal (as the transcendental moral horizon which allows for the articulation of social life/sacred) is what accounts for both freedom and social change, and also for social antagonism. Social antagonism, expressed as social exclusion and violence, is a reaction to the fear of social disintegration; to the fear of the possibility of losing the universal/moral horizon that makes society possible.