Is Violence Therapeutic?

Posted by Bohdana Kurylo

In his book, The Wretched of the Earth, the theorist of colonialism Frantz Fanon provides an unprecedented legitimation of violence – passing beyond mere self-defence or the removal of an oppressive social system. Violence becomes a necessary therapy to address the ‘systemised negation of the other’. Yet to what extent is violence really therapeutic? There seems to be a fine line between its utility and its harm.

Fanon offered three major reasons as to why violence is crucial for resistance:

• Violence may be a liberating force. From his observations of the behaviour of the colonisers, he concluded that the oppressed are not considered to be of equal human value. In contexts where one party possesses a clear dominance over another, universal values, such as justice or equality, apply only to the more powerful. Within this context, nonviolence is not an option, since it simply sustains the violence of the oppressors, whether physical or mental. The struggle, for the oppressed, is only a distraction from the concrete demands of emancipation.

• Violence may be a cleansing force. It rids the oppressed of their inferiority complex. Fanon claimed that the belief that emancipation must be achieved by force originates intuitively among the oppressed. He observed that, through generations, the oppressed internalise the tag of worthlessness. Anger at their powerlessness eats them from the inside, begging for an outlet. Violence becomes psychologically desirable, as it proves to the oppressed that they are as powerful and as capable as the oppressor. It forces respect – but more importantly, it gives the oppressed a sense of self-respect. By cleansing them of their inferiority complex, violence reinstates them as human beings.

• Violence may be a productive force. On a grander scale, Fanon saw violence as the means of creating a new world. Through violence, a new humanity can be achieved. Violence is instrumental in raising collective consciousness and building solidarity in the struggle for freedom. This creative characteristic of violence could bring a new political reality that comprised the creation of new values.

Ends justify means for Fanon, who accepts even absolute violence for the purposes of liberation and regeneration. Although he built on the specific case of colonial oppression, his ideas can be applied to violence against any regime in which a group’s rights are severely and systematically violated, whether there be cultural, gender, or economic oppression.

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) often referred to Fanon to justify its terrorist violence. One may recall how the partition of Ireland was followed by social, political, and economic discrimination against the Catholic population of Northern Ireland. The attempts of the British government to suppress the IRA by force only reinforced the need to find an outlet for the accumulated frustration and internalised violence. Indeed, Fanon himself claimed that terrorism may be an ‘unfortunate necessity’ to counter the retaliation of a regime after the initial revolt of the oppressed.

Nevertheless, to the extent that the violence of the IRA can be explained by Fanon, this case also disproves Fanon. In particular, the IRA experience disproves the justification of the use of violence as the only means of creating a new culture of politics. Lasting for more than thirty years, the Northern Ireland conflict shows that violence often leads to stalemate, and is unable to deliver the desired results.

The eventual willingness of the British government to recognise the legitimacy of the insurgents’ demands, however limited, offered more possibilities for creating a new culture of politics than continued bloodshed. After all, the fact that Algeria is still torn apart by violence today illustrates that the efficacy of violence in the short term can be mistaken for its efficacy in general. The danger is that the means may overwhelm the ends. Thus Fanon’s belief that, after a period of confrontation, the door would eventually be open for a modern and peaceful society seems unrealistic.

Most importantly, Fanon failed to see that reusing the methods of the oppressor is antagonistic to the idea of creating new values. For Fanon, violence signals the point of no return to the dehumanised past. Yet he was vague as to how a capitulation to anger can help establish a new humanity, for there is nothing new about the use of violence to achieve one’s aims. In fact, is it not merely an imitation of the enemy? A new system of values is rotten from the inside if it is founded on mimicking the perpetrator’s actions.

A Philosophy of Untruth

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

Untruth has to do, not with greed or with need, compulsion or coercion, but with my life-view – and my life-view begins with my conception of the world. From this arises every untruth.

Psychologist Richard Gregory puts it in a word: we, as humans, are motivated by the “unexpected”. That is, whenever and wherever I hold up my personal conception of the world to the world itself, and there discover a disjoint, I am moved to act. Therefore, prior to all of my actions is the way in which I arrange the world in my mind.

Supposing then that, in my imagination, my life is a happy family in suburbia – a friendly dog, fresh muffins on the table, and daisy-chains and laughs. Then I look from my kitchen window, to see my little girl with her face down in the grass. Suddenly there is a disjoint, and I spring into action. Of course, different people will spring into action for different reasons, and this reveals their various conceptions of the world. Some may not want a happy family in suburbia, or a dog, or fresh muffins on the table. Some may want to be loose and wild, and some may want to immerse themselves in figures. The possibilities are as many as the people.

And so, on the one hand, our conception of the world may be balanced and broad – or on the other hand, short-sighted, self-interested, and parochial. Some will live a “large” life, which is well-rounded and meaningful – while others will live a small-time existence, a self-destructive life, as fools or bunglers. In short, some will become wise, and some will become fools. With these simple observations, we may now describe the first of three forms of untruth we shall survey: namely, foolishness. Foolishness is rooted in the “small” view life – and where we find it, we tend to pity it, laugh at it, or denigrate it.  But we don't much take it to heart. It matters little to the rest of us.

Now consider that all of us arrange our worlds differently in our minds. And, again, from these conceptions of our world, our motivations arise. But now, given different conceptions of our world, and different motivations, it stands to reason that my own motivations may come into conflict with the motivations of another.  And if I do not yield to the other, then the other must yield to me. This must mean that if the other cannot, through natural processes, change my own conceptual arrangement of the world, they may yet be able to change the conceptual stuff that I have to work with. With a few targeted ruses, they may change the world I think I live in.

I may feel passionate about the village duckpond, for instance, while another person wants to build a helipad there. But if they cannot overcome my passion for the pond, by fairly changing my own conceptual arrangement of the world, they may tamper with the conceptual stuff I have to work with. They may tell me (falsely) that permission for their helipad has been granted on high authority, or that duckponds are death-traps for children. This now differs from mere foolishness, in that it seeks to manipulate what I know – and it happens all the time, whether on the personal level of lies, or on the political level of propaganda. It is our second form of untruth: namely, lies and deceit.

But further than this.  Not only may one change the way in which I arrange the world in my mind. One may change the world itself – through force and through violence, or comparable actions. Think again on the person who wishes to create the helipad. In the dark of night now, they send a small-time crook with a dump truck, to fill in the duckpond in one dramatic act. Now my conceptual arrangement of the world must change, because the world itself has changed. I have no pond left to defend, and no more purpose in opposing a helipad.

The dynamics of course may be more complex in the real world. It may be easy to see that a pond was filled in on the orders of the person who had a vested interest in it. It may be less easy to see that running me out of town with false rumours had to do with the pond, or that someone now drives a new Bentley on this account. And so the world of untruth may become tangled and dark, and as vast as the ocean. One finds it in lies and in half-truths, bluff and deceit, rationalisation and subterfuge – and now, thirdly, in violence of many kinds: physical, emotional, verbal, financial, sexual.

Now notice what has happened in the course of this short post. By means of some basic principles, all manner of evils in this world have been reconciled. Whether someone is reckoned to be a fool, a liar, or a thug, these are all basically one and the same. It is through a false conceptual arrangement of the world that people fall prey to each one. And notice something else: something about human nature, which seems to speak louder than words. Our moral integrity (or not) lies beyond our immediate control. It lies beyond all moralism and legalism. It changes only if our very life-view changes.

Picture Post No. 6: The Croquet Game

'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t that what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

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Posted by Martin Cohen and Tessa den Uyl

New Mexico, 1874

This peaceful scene (the whole right part looks almost like a romantic painting) of a game of croquet set in the American South, generated considerable media interest, once it was established that one of the men pictured was none other that the notorious outlaw, Billy the Kid. Billy, it should be explained, was considered to be both ruthless and dashing, and had a dramatic end at an early age involving a shoot out with the sherifs.

Juxtaposed, then, as art critics might say, with this quintessentially genteel act, the game of croquet, redolent of English afternoon teas and cucumber sandwiches, we have a powerful perhaps slightly piquant reminder that even a murderer, a desperado, can have another, gentler  side. (Even if, as anyone who has actually played croquet knows, the game is actually quite cruel and remorseless, as players wreck the hopes of their opponents by blasting their wooden balls into the shrubbery.)

Billy himself, looking just a little bit dangerous?