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Table of contents
No. 2 - Volume 1 (2013)
Relations of Violence
Edited by Pascal Eitler
Pascal Eitler: Einführung: Gewaltverhältnisse – eine körpergeschichtliche Perspektive.
To the article + English abstract …
Introduction: Relations of Violence from the Perspective of Body History.
This introduction confronts and combines the history of violence with the history of the body on the one side and the history of the self on the other, emphasizing therefore not so much the phenomenology and situations of violence but the genealogy and relations of violence, its power to create very different relations between very different people, concerning not only the history of the state but evoking new discourses and practices of the self as well. The body is, thus, not seen as a static target or given tool but as a historical product of and in its changing productivity within relations of violence. Against this background the aim of this introduction is to promote the analysis of violence beyond war and mass murder – especially between the 1960s and 1980s.
This introduction confronts and combines the history of violence with the history of the body on the one side and the history of the self on the other, emphasizing therefore not so much the phenomenology and situations of violence but the genealogy and relations of violence, its power to create very different relations between very different people, concerning not only the history of the state but evoking new discourses and practices of the self as well. The body is, thus, not seen as a static target or given tool but as a historical product of and in its changing productivity within relations of violence. Against this background the aim of this introduction is to promote the analysis of violence beyond war and mass murder – especially between the 1960s and 1980s.
Perspectives
Jürgen Martschukat: Gewalt: Kritische Überlegungen zur Historizität ihrer Formen, Funktionen und Legitimierungen.
To the article + English abstract …
Violence: Critical Reflections on the Historicity of its Forms, Functions and Legitimations.
The article argues against quantifying approaches to the study of violence which assume a decline of violence throughout history and seem to have been gaining new momentum with Steven Pinker’s recently published important book. Instead, it explores the continuous and powerful impact of violence in modern history, even though “modern civilized” societies have been officially opposed to violence and its use for centuries. Analyzing particular configurations of violence and its different employments in both Europe and North America against different people and differently perceived bodies this article questions the paradigms of “civilization” and “modernity.” Violence is rendered compatible with “modern civilization” through the regularity of its use, through its concealment, and through its deployment against those people who are not perceived as “subjects” and whose lives and suffering are deemed less “grievable” (Judith Butler).
The article argues against quantifying approaches to the study of violence which assume a decline of violence throughout history and seem to have been gaining new momentum with Steven Pinker’s recently published important book. Instead, it explores the continuous and powerful impact of violence in modern history, even though “modern civilized” societies have been officially opposed to violence and its use for centuries. Analyzing particular configurations of violence and its different employments in both Europe and North America against different people and differently perceived bodies this article questions the paradigms of “civilization” and “modernity.” Violence is rendered compatible with “modern civilization” through the regularity of its use, through its concealment, and through its deployment against those people who are not perceived as “subjects” and whose lives and suffering are deemed less “grievable” (Judith Butler).
Eva Bischoff: The Cannibal and the Caterpillar: Violence, Pain, and Becoming-Man in Early Twentieth Century Germany.
To the article + English abstract …
The Cannibal and the Caterpillar: Violence, Pain, and Becoming-Man in Early Twentieth Century Germany.
In the wake of Foucauldian thought, the self and its identity are often regarded as the result of disciplinary practices and technologies, inscribing the law into the body which is depicted as a passive, pliable matter. This account echoes the binary divisions between nature/culture, mind/body, and sex/gender. Feminist scholars have repeatedly questioned this Cartesian dichotomy. This essay explores the potential of DeleuzoGuattarian feminist theory to capture the affective momentum of the body as an agent in its own right: its capacity to establish affective, visceral, carnal connections and thereby to transform itself. It focusses on the case of Peter Kürten, a serial sex criminal, and his incarceration in early twentieth-century Germany. Following Elizabeth Grosz’s suggestion to imagine body and mind, matter and discourse as locked to each other in a Möbius strip, it argues that even in extreme situations of confinement and discipline, we can detect the interconnectedness of disciplinary power and bodily potentia without presuming one has supremacy over the other.
In the wake of Foucauldian thought, the self and its identity are often regarded as the result of disciplinary practices and technologies, inscribing the law into the body which is depicted as a passive, pliable matter. This account echoes the binary divisions between nature/culture, mind/body, and sex/gender. Feminist scholars have repeatedly questioned this Cartesian dichotomy. This essay explores the potential of DeleuzoGuattarian feminist theory to capture the affective momentum of the body as an agent in its own right: its capacity to establish affective, visceral, carnal connections and thereby to transform itself. It focusses on the case of Peter Kürten, a serial sex criminal, and his incarceration in early twentieth-century Germany. Following Elizabeth Grosz’s suggestion to imagine body and mind, matter and discourse as locked to each other in a Möbius strip, it argues that even in extreme situations of confinement and discipline, we can detect the interconnectedness of disciplinary power and bodily potentia without presuming one has supremacy over the other.
Analysis
Marcel Streng: Kampf – Kunst – Körper. Zum Verhältnis von Körper- und Gewaltgeschichte in „fernöstlichen“ Kampftechniken in (West-)Deutschland (1920er bis 1980er Jahre).
To the article + English abstract …
Fight – Art – Body. Linking the History of the Body to the History of Violence: ‘Far Eastern’ Martial Arts in West Germany from the 1920s to 1980s.
This contribution explores the field of "Asian martial arts" in Germany between the 1920s and the 1980s in the Federal Republic. From the onset, I argue, the evolution of "Asian martial arts" in Germany was deeply affected by diverging definitions of their very nature. The discourse on whether they should be seen as elaborate gymnastic practices for health improvement, or rather be defined as training methods for mere violence or self-defence in everyday life materialised into a double organisational structure of sporting associations on the one hand and private martial arts enterprises on the other. Beyond this controversial context, "Asian martial arts" – and especially those which in the German context were related to or constructed as traditionally Japanese – developed as sophisticated techniques of body formation, self-defence training or general self-empowerment. They related to specific strategies and purposes, revealed highly ambivalent and thus produced historically diverging bodies.
This contribution explores the field of "Asian martial arts" in Germany between the 1920s and the 1980s in the Federal Republic. From the onset, I argue, the evolution of "Asian martial arts" in Germany was deeply affected by diverging definitions of their very nature. The discourse on whether they should be seen as elaborate gymnastic practices for health improvement, or rather be defined as training methods for mere violence or self-defence in everyday life materialised into a double organisational structure of sporting associations on the one hand and private martial arts enterprises on the other. Beyond this controversial context, "Asian martial arts" – and especially those which in the German context were related to or constructed as traditionally Japanese – developed as sophisticated techniques of body formation, self-defence training or general self-empowerment. They related to specific strategies and purposes, revealed highly ambivalent and thus produced historically diverging bodies.
Pascal Eitler: Das „Reich der Sinne“? Pornographie, Philosophie und die Brutalisierung der Sexualität (Westdeutschland 1968-1988).
To the article + English abstract …
The "Realm of the Senses"? Pornography, Philosophy and the Brutalization of Sexuality in West Germany 1968-1988.
This article addresses a new kind of entanglement between visualized sexuality and sexualized violence within hard-core and especially soft-core pornography in the 1970s and 1980s. It reconstructs and contextualizes how sharply increasing violence against women within the pornography of this timeframe constituted a brutalization of sexuality. The article thereby analyzes what sort of concrete knowledge about violence practices, the imagined female body, and the propagated female self was offered by pornography around and after 1968. Against this background, it also tries to historicize and to better understand the feminist Anti-Pornography-Movement of the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on the harmed feelings of women who not only observed violence within pornography but experienced it themselves while observing it.
This article addresses a new kind of entanglement between visualized sexuality and sexualized violence within hard-core and especially soft-core pornography in the 1970s and 1980s. It reconstructs and contextualizes how sharply increasing violence against women within the pornography of this timeframe constituted a brutalization of sexuality. The article thereby analyzes what sort of concrete knowledge about violence practices, the imagined female body, and the propagated female self was offered by pornography around and after 1968. Against this background, it also tries to historicize and to better understand the feminist Anti-Pornography-Movement of the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on the harmed feelings of women who not only observed violence within pornography but experienced it themselves while observing it.
Hendrik Pletz: Das Wundmal im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. Horrorvideos und die Herausforderungen des Affekts in den 1980er Jahren.
To the article + English abstract …
The Scar in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility. Horror Films and Affective Challenges in the 1980s.
The human body poses challenges for society in general and specifically for its media. However, it is often the effect on the viewers’ bodies rather than the morally reprehensible mise-en-scene of the body on screen that fuels debate. This applies par-ticularly to the horror movie genre. The shock experienced while watching a horror film becomes a threat to the inviolability of the viewer’s body and a threat to a socially con-stituted difference between fiction and reality resp. medium and world that is woven into the fabric of society itself. The article deals with the pedagogical discourse on horror videos in the early and booming stage of the video recorder. It demonstrates how the wounds inflicted within the films threatened the audience’s body even more than its moral integrity.
The human body poses challenges for society in general and specifically for its media. However, it is often the effect on the viewers’ bodies rather than the morally reprehensible mise-en-scene of the body on screen that fuels debate. This applies par-ticularly to the horror movie genre. The shock experienced while watching a horror film becomes a threat to the inviolability of the viewer’s body and a threat to a socially con-stituted difference between fiction and reality resp. medium and world that is woven into the fabric of society itself. The article deals with the pedagogical discourse on horror videos in the early and booming stage of the video recorder. It demonstrates how the wounds inflicted within the films threatened the audience’s body even more than its moral integrity.
Open Section
Joseph Ben Prestel: Die Reform der Stadtmänner. Urbaner Wandel und Körperpolitik in Kairo am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts.
To the article + English abstract …
The Reform of the Urbanites. Urban Change and Body Politics in Cairo in the late 19th century.
This article considers debates about the detrimental effects of urban change in late nineteenth-century Cairo in the context of a history of the body. Contrasting arguments about Cairo’s corrupting influence that surfaced in the Arabic language press with earlier debates on the transformation of the city, the author argues that the urban middle class began to see a connection between city life and the damage of the male body at the turn of the nineteenth century. As claims about Cairo’s damaging effects gave way to new bodily practices and building projects, this article views the emergence of suburbs and the spread of sports in the Egyptian capital around 1900 as interrelated to a form of body politics.
This article considers debates about the detrimental effects of urban change in late nineteenth-century Cairo in the context of a history of the body. Contrasting arguments about Cairo’s corrupting influence that surfaced in the Arabic language press with earlier debates on the transformation of the city, the author argues that the urban middle class began to see a connection between city life and the damage of the male body at the turn of the nineteenth century. As claims about Cairo’s damaging effects gave way to new bodily practices and building projects, this article views the emergence of suburbs and the spread of sports in the Egyptian capital around 1900 as interrelated to a form of body politics.