Internal Violence: A Critique of Absolute Socialisations

The rise of violence across the world raises a number of questions pertaining to human relations in our societies. There seem to be concerns regarding human socialisations in general. In contemporary African societies, addressing the problem of violence would also involve dealing with issues such as the conceptions of others and the self, and coloniality and decoloniality together with the politics of violence arising relatively from that experience. This chapter seeks to address the role of violence in African societies and the connection of this violence to human socialisations. I shall argue that human socialisations are the main origin of violence. Drawing on Richard Turner’s The Eye of the Needle: Towards Participatory Democracy in South Africa, I contend that if human socialisations are the origin of violence, there is need for a new disposition to internal socialisations and human relations in ways that call for internal violence. By internal violence, I mean the need to engage individual socialisations in a way that opens up possibilities for alternative ways of being and living with others. This is different from external violence, which focuses on inflicting harm on others.