Violence: Humans in Dark Times

by Brad Evans

Through a series of penetrating conversations originally published in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books , Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard talk with a wide range of cutting edge thinkers--including Oliver Stone, Simon Critchley, and Elaine Scarry --to explore the problem of violence in everyday life, politics, culture, media, language, memory, and the environment. "To bring out the best of us," writes Evans, "we have to confront the worst of what humans are capable of doing to one another. In short, there is a need to confront the intolerable realities of violence in this world." These lively, in-depth exchanges among historians, theorists, and artists offer a timely and bracing look at how the increasing expression and acceptance of violence--in all strata of society--has become a defining feature of our times. "Many of us live today with a pervasive sense of unease, worried that our own safety is at risk, or that of our loved ones, or that of people whose bad circumstances appear to us through networked media. Violence feels ever-present. Natasha Lennard and Brad Evans help us to analyze those feelings, talking with a wide range of thinkers in order to gain insight into the worst of what humans do, and challenging us to imagine a world in which violence is no longer a given. Their book is full of surprising insights and intelligent compassion."-- Sarah Leonard , co-editor of The Future We Radical Ideas for the New Century "In Violence , Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard have created, alongside their interview subjects, a kaleidoscopic exploration of the concept of violence, in terrains expected and not, in prose taut and unexpectedly gorgeous. Their philosophical rigor provides the reader with an intellectual arsenal against the violence of the current moment."-- Molly Crabapple , author of Drawing Blood "We would be wise to read this collection with a similar eye toward service, and in so doing, open ourselves up to the rare mercy of no longer having to stand on our own."-- Alana Massey , author of All The Lives I Want "The range of interviews with leading academics, to filmmakers and artists, is impressive, at once immediate and relevant, but also profoundly philosophical. More essentially, though, the conversations underline the need and suggest ways to resist and organize in a visionary way, in the extraordinary times we live in."-- Razia Iqbal , BBC News "Notable contemporary thinkers and creators give their individual perspectives in this compelling look at violence. . . . A provocative volume that challenges humanity to correct its runaway course toward an increasingly violent future by learning from its violent past."-- Kirkus Reviews "The purpose of the work is to challenge humanity to create more meaningful solutions when it comes to these kinds of violence--or at least to name violence without inadvertently inciting even more anger. . . . passion roars through every chapter . . . This book delivers on what it promises, which is an achievement. "--Alison Gately, The Los Angeles Review of Books "If you wish to read the intellectualization of violence, Violence is a phenomenal anthology. . . . Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard, the interviewers and the 'authors' of the anthology, have done a remarkable job in bringing together perceptive and intelligent contributors from various fields to scout the reaches of violence. Their piercing questions brought out brilliant responses from the interviewees."--L. Ali Khan, New York Journal of Books " Humans in Dark Times is an intriguing beginning to a much-needed sustained intellectual and aesthetic response to the horrors of modern times."—Zoe Vorsino

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, History, Society

352 pages, Paperback

Published November 27, 2018

Reviews

[Niklas Pivic · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an anthology of conversations originally published in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books, mainly conducted by Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard.

These conversations are centered around one singular theme: violence (surprise!). The interviewees are varied, from philosophers to musicians, even though most of them focus on the USA and Donald Trump’s then-recent election.

The ghost of Hannah Arendt lies heavily over the book; many interviewees consider her legacy, especially where totalitarianism is engaged.

From the introduction:

Writing in the late 1960s, Hannah Arendt conjured the term “dark times” to address the legacies of war and human suffering. Arendt was not simply concerned with mapping out the totalitarian conditions into which humanity had descended. She was also acutely aware of the importance of individuals who challenge with integrity the abuses of power in all their oppressive forms. Countering violence, she understood, demands sustained intellectual engagement: we are all watchpersons, guided by the lessons and cautions of centuries of unnecessary devastation.

What separates this book from many others, is the levels of philosophy, psychology, and political theory that layer the interviews; this is quite some heady stuff, and it’s most often worth the dense reading materials; very seldom can one claim that the interviews contain fun or wispy airiness. This ain’t no picnic, indeed.

The following quote is a typical one from the book:

As Simon Critchley intimated in a very powerful piece in “The Stone” in 2011, breaking the cycle of violence and revenge requires entirely new political and philosophical coordinates and resources to point us in alternative directions. I’d like to add to this discussion by drawing attention to Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker, which is still arguably one of the most famous human embodiments of philosophical and critical inquiry.

The symbolic form given to Rodin’s isolated and contemplative sculpture alone should raise a number of critical concerns for us. Not least the ways in which its ethnic, masculine, and all too athletic form, speaks to evident racial, gendered, and survivalist grammars. But let’s consider for a moment what the thinker is actually contemplating. Alone on his plinth, the thinker could in fact be thinking about anything. We just hope it is something serious.

Such ambiguity was not, however, as Rodin intended. In the original 1880 sculpture, the thinker actually appears kneeling before The Gates of Hell. We might read this as significant for a whole number of reasons.

First, it is the “scene of violence” which gives specific context to Rodin’s thinker. Thought begins for the thinker in the presence of the raw realities of violence and suffering. The thinker in fact is being forced to suffer into truth. Second, there is an interesting tension in terms of the thinker’s relationship to violence. Sat before the gates, the thinker appears to be turning away from the intolerable scene behind. This we could argue is a tendency unfortunately all too common when thinking about violence today. Turning away into abstraction or some scientifically neutralizing position of “objectivity.” Yet, according to one purposeful reading, the figure in this commission is actually Dante, who is contemplating the circles of hell as narrated in The Divine Comedy. This is significant. Rather than looking away, might it be that the figure is now actually staring directly into the abyss below? Hence raising the fundamental ethical question of what it means to be forced witness to violence? And third, not in any way incidental, in the original commission the thinker is actually called “the poet.” This I want to argue is deeply significant for rethinking the future of the political.

The Thinker was initially conceived as a tortured body yet also as a freethinking human, determined to transcend his suffering through poetry. We continue to be taught that politics is a social science and that its true command is in the power of analytical reason. Such has been the hallmark of centuries of reasoned, rationalized, and calculated violence, which has made the intolerable appear arbitrary and normal. Countering this demands a rethinking of the political itself in more poetic terms, which is tasked with imagining better futures and styles for living among the world of peoples.

However, don’t let the somewhat obtuse language fool you; there’s variety, perspective, and valuable analysis here! An example:

One way of looking at 9/11—let’s call it the standard way— is that the United States was at peace with the world and then terror came from the sky and the twin towers tumbled. In that view, 9/11 was a single act that required a justified reaction, namely war in the Middle East, the infinite detention of suspected “terrorists” in places like Guantánamo Bay, and the construction of the vast institutional apparatus of Homeland Security.

But another way of looking at 9/11 is looking at what Osama bin Laden said about the matter. In a 2004 video called The Towers of Lebanon, where he first accepted responsibility for Al Qaeda’s role in the 9/11 attacks, he justifies the attacks by claiming that they were a reaction to the persistent violation of Arab lands by the United States, especially the use of Saudi Arabia as a base during the first Gulf War. Bin Laden even adds that the idea of 9/11 came to him as a visual memory of watching TV footage of the Israeli bombardment of West Beirut’s high-rise tower blocks in 1982. If the “Zionist-Crusaders,” as he pejoratively puts it, could put missiles into towers, then so could Al Qaeda. Thus the idea for 9/11 was born.

Sport is obviously violent, and it is violence that we want to see. We want to see people putting their bodies on the line for their team and leaving their bodies on the field. This is why the whole debate about concussions in the NFL is so hypocritical, to my mind. Sport is a place where bodies break. If you don’t agree with it, then don’t watch it.

I adored Natasha Lennard’s interview with Adrian Parr, professor of environmental politics and cultural criticism at the University of Cincinnati and the director of the Taft Research Center. From it:

Natasha Lennard: In your work, you raise the idea of framing climate degradation as a form of violence and potentially as a crime against humanity. What does it mean to speak of the human destruction of the climate in terms of criminal justice? Is there a distinct guilty party that can be held responsible for this crime?

Adrian Parr: There are three components to the claim that environmental degradation is a crime against humanity. First, it is an appeal to a universal, common humanity that stretches across space and time and that is oblivious to geographic and historical differences.

Second, the crime in question is an existential one that is committed against the very experience of being human, the human élan.

Third, it is a crime that calls the established legal order into question, because everyone, yet no one specifically, can be held responsible. What is the nature of this crime?

The human species is the agent of a terrible injustice being perpetrated against other species, future generations, ecosystems, and our fellow human beings. Examples include contaminated waterways, mass species extinction, massive fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, and unsustainable rates of deforestation, to name just a few. This is leading to extreme and more frequent weather events, expanding deserts, loss of biodiversity, collapsing ecosystems, water depletion and contamination, and the rise of global sea levels.

However, humans are not all equally guilty of this crime. Some, such as those advancing the interests of the fossil-fuel industry, or those whose high-income lifestyles carry a heavy environmental footprint, are implicated more than those living in poverty. Present and past generations are collectively more at fault than future generations.

At the same time, the human species is an agent of justice, having crafted laws designed to hold criminals accountable. Troubled when we witness violence, discrimination, and unnecessary cruelty, we also individually serve as vehicles of justice.

Natasha Lennard: Because human activities cause this environmental damage, our species is culpable for a crime we are committing against ourselves. But in our defense, humanity is largely trapped by the political form of liberal state power, which facilitates the smooth functioning of global capitalism—the source of the problem. On that point, you suggest that climate change cannot be properly challenged with the tools or “innovations” of the neoliberal, capitalist system that caused it. Can you expand on this?

Adrian Parr: Absolutely. In my view, it is futile to try to solve the harms being inflicted upon the environment using the same mechanisms that produced the problem in the first place. Environmental degradation is the concrete form of late capitalism. The failure to recognize and respond to this situation is in bad faith. For instance, the idea that we can “green” a capitalist economy without radically rethinking the basic premises at the heart of neoliberal economic theory is truly an example of misplaced politics. The system is premised upon a model of endless growth, competition, private property, and consumer citizenship, all of which combine to produce a terribly exploitative, oppressive, and violent structure that has come to infuse all aspects of everyday life.

Environmental degradation is calling us to the witness stand of history. It demands we testify against ourselves and mount a case in our defense. Ultimately, we are all agents of history. To reduce ourselves to a role of mere observation is to deny us of our humanity.

That, to me, is probably the most beautiful and urgent part of the entire book.

Other luminaries, for example Henry A. Giroux, show their intelligence:

What I have called the violence of organized forgetting signals how contemporary politics are those in which emotion triumphs over reason, and spectacle over truth, thereby erasing history by producing an endless flow of fragmented and disingenuous knowledge. At a time in which figures like Donald Trump are able to gain a platform by promoting values of “greatness” that serve to cleanse the memory of social and political progress achieved in the name of equality and basic human decency, history and thought itself are under attack. Once ignorance is weaponized, violence seems to be a tragic inevitability.

The mass shooting in Orlando is yet another example of an emerging global political and cultural climate of violence fed by hate and mass hysteria. Such violence legitimates not only a kind of inflammatory rhetoric and ideological fundamentalism that views violence as the only solution to addressing social issues, it also provokes further irrational acts of violence against others. Spurned on by a complete disrespect for those who affirm different ways of living, this massacre points to a growing climate of hate and bigotry that is unapologetic in its political nihilism.

It would be easy to dismiss such an act as another senseless example of radical Islamic terrorism. That is too easy.

Another set of questions needs to be asked. What are the deeper political, educational, and social conditions that allow a climate of hate, racism, and bigotry to become the dominant discourse of a society or worldview? What role do politicians with their racist and aggressive discourses play in the emerging landscapes of violence? How can we use education, among other resources, to prevent politics from being transformed into a pathology? And how might we counter these tragic and terrifying conditions without retreating into security or military mindsets?

There is more at work here than the infantilizing notion that students should be protected rather than challenged in the classroom; there is also the danger of creating a chilling effect on the part of faculty who want to address controversial topics such as war, poverty, spectacles of violence, racism, sexism, and inequality. If American society wants to invest in its young people, it has an obligation to provide them with an education in which they are challenged, can learn to take risks, think outside the boundaries of established ideologies, and expand the far reaches of their creativity and critical judgment. This demands a pedagogy that is complicated, taxing, and disruptive.

In summary, this anthology is one that called upon myself to continue my reading. It’s heady and worth it. Get in, and I’d be surprised if even the most stalwart opponent of this book wouldn’t be able to like it.

[Daisy S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply the best compilation of thoughts on the origins, purposes, and alternatives to violence. Lovely in so many ways.

[Ruz El · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full Disclosure: I'm punching above my weight-class with this one. This book takes a look at violence in all it's forms via a series of interviews with a wide variety of subjects. Some are more intellectualized than I am used too, but I got something of value from all of them. Worth checking out.

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wide array of interviews on the topic of violence. Most perspectives discussed are very interesting, and some are even surprising. There was a weight put on views from the arts, which complemented the more academic contributions. Overall, a good read.