Violence and Political Theory,Elizabeth Frazer

-About this book

Is politics necessarily violent? Does the justifiability of violence depend on whether it is perpetrated to defend or upend the existing order – or perhaps on the way in which it is conducted? Is violence simply direct physical harm, or can it also be structural, symbolic, or epistemic?
In this book, Elizabeth Frazer and Kimberley Hutchings explore how political theorists, from Niccolo Machiavelli to Elaine Scarry, have addressed these issues. They engage with both defenders and critics of violence in politics, analysing their diverse justificatory and rhetorical strategies in order to draw out the enduring themes of these debates. They show how political theorists have tended to evade the central difficulties raised by violence by either reducing it to a neutral tool or identifying it with something quite distinct, such as justice or virtue. They argue that, because violence is necessarily wrapped up with hierarchical and exclusive structures and imaginaries, legitimising it in terms of the ends that it serves, or how it is perpetrated, no longer makes sense.
This book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars in areas ranging from the ethics of terror and war to radical and revolutionary political thought.

-Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Reflections on Politics and Violence

1-Politics and Revolutionary Violence

Introduction

John Locke (1632–1704)

Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)

Georges Sorel (1847–1922)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961)

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986)

Understanding and judging revolutionary violence

Notes

2-Politics and State Violence

Introduction

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)

Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831)

Max Weber (1864–1920)

Carl Schmitt (1888–1985)

Understanding and judging violence for the state

Notes

3-Politics and Violence Reconsidered

Introduction

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

Rethinking politics and violence

Notes

4-Politics as a Continuation of Violence

Introduction

Michel Foucault (1926–1984)

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004)

Giorgio Agamben (b. 1942)

The avowal of violence

Notes

5-The Problem of Violence

Introduction

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921)

Emma Goldman (1869–1940)

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)

Anarchist ambivalence

Notes

6-Violence and the Transformation of Man

Introduction

Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948)

Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)

Warriors and political transformations

Notes

7-The Politicisation of Violence

Introduction

Jane Addams (1860–1935)

Feminism and pacifism revived

Feminists contra pacifism

Sarah Ruddick (1935–2011)

Jean Elshtain (1941–2013)

Gender, politics and violence

Notes

8-Towards a Political Theory of Violence

Introduction

Elaine Scarry (b. 1946)

Theorising violence as politics

Towards a political theory of violence

References

Index

-Carcatéristiques

Date de parution:3 avril 2020

Éditeur ‏ : ‎ Polity Press  

Langue ‏ : ‎ Anglais

NB.de parution‏ : ‎ 224 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1509536728

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1509536726

Poids de l’article ‏ : ‎ 316 g

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.59 x 1.98 x 20.6 cm