Violence and Meaning

Description

This edited collection explores the problem of violence from the vantage point of meaning. Taking up the ambiguity of the word ‘meaning’, the chapters analyse the manner in which violence affects and in some cases constitutes the meaningful structure of our lifeworld, on individual, social, religious and conceptual levels. The relationship between violence and meaning is multifaceted, and is thus investigated from a variety of different perspectives within the continental tradition of philosophy, including phenomenology, post-structuralism, critical theory and psychoanalysis. Divided into four parts, the volume explores diverging meanings of the concept of violence, as well as transcendent or religious violence- a form of violence that takes place between humanity and the divine world. Going on to investigate instances of immanent and secular violence, which occur at the level of the group, community or society, the book concludes with an exploration of violence and meaning on the individual level: violence at the level of the self, or between particular persons. With its focus on the manifold of relations between violence and meaning, as well as its four part focus on conceptual, transcendent, immanent and individual violence, the book is both multi-directional and multi-layered. Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 Violence As Metaphor (Vasti Roodt)....Pages 3-26 Violence and Essentialism? (Lode Lauwaert)....Pages 27-37 Front Matter ....Pages 39-39 The Temporality of Violence: Destruction, Dissolution and the Construction of Sense (Felix Ó Murchadha)....Pages 41-58 Reflections on the Meanings of Religious Violence: A Phenomenological Exploration (Michael Staudigl)....Pages 59-90 The Violence of the Singular (Arthur Cools)....Pages 91-109 Is Violence Inescapable? Derrida, Religion, and the Irreducibility of Violence (Jason W. Alvis)....Pages 111-133 Front Matter ....Pages 135-135 The Double Meanings of Violence: Catharsis and Mimesis (Nidesh Lawtoo)....Pages 137-165 The Last Second, or Eternity: Ernst Jünger Looking at Photographs of the First World War (Stéphane Symons, Tammy Castelein)....Pages 167-188 Front Matter ....Pages 189-189 Torturous Violence: A Phenomenological Approach to the Violence in the Acts of Torture (Jeremy Heuslein)....Pages 191-215 Oppressed by Shame: From Auschwitz to a Politics of Revolt (Debra Bergoffen)....Pages 217-238 Forming the Individual: Castoriadis and Lacan on the Socio-symbolic Function of Violence (Gavin Rae)....Pages 239-265 Back Matter ....Pages 267-268