The Affective Ambiguity of Violence: A Study in the Phenomenology of Spectacular Violence

The discourse of violence is fraught with various aporias. Widely known is the truly vicious circle of violence and counter-violence. This correlation attests to a profound aporia since the parts of this circle are not simply tied to each other as opposites, incongruent counterparts, or exclusive determinations that we might clearly demarcate. Phenomenologically speaking, we rather need to understand them in terms of intertwining. Unfolding the implications of this concept, I hypothesize that the discourse of order (and the legitimate counter-violence that it entails) is not only interrelated to but rather parasitic upon (imaginations of) disorder. The unruly, disorderly, etc., thus viewed functions as the “originary supplement” of order, providing it with the “raw material” to keep the project of ordering alive. I argue that this parasitic relationship is exemplified most clearly in our practices of representing violence and the fascination that these frequently entail: violence thus viewed appears as the most ambiguous “tremendum fascinans,” embodying the kind of “negative transcendence” that our social orders cannot do without. This hypothesis is tested across a series of examples, bridging diverse historic cases. In light of this analysis, I argue that our tendency to symbolically appresent this “other of reason” testifies to the said intertwining that links our moral condemnations of violence to our existential incapacity to escape it. The question, in the last analysis, amounts to whether or not we may confront this invasive character of violence and imagine representations that may help us to escape our self-righteous posture toward this inherently social fact, which all too often eclipses our ways of affirming it.