Violence

Escutar a crítica à violência e ao poder. A crítica à perfectibilização do aparato repressivo autoritário estatal, articulado legal, ilegal e moralmente. Escutar. Escutar, desde há muito tempo, para além de falar, tornou-se uma tarefa, um trabalho, um exercício para a construção efetiva das vias de libertação das condições civilizadas de servidão nas quais nos encontramos-o que faz verso à desconstrução das amarras hiperracionais que determinam uma nossa existência danificada, maltratada, não obstante assim legitimada. Um tal paradigma da escuta não se opõe meramente ao paradigma hegemônico da fala, do lugar de fala, autorizado pela lógica identitária. A escuta tornou-se, antes, radicalmente, o ambiente próprio-impróprio da não-identidade, tempo-espaço auditivo, timpânico, martelando filosofia pelo contrapelo; pele sensível, não dominada, bem longe do mesmo-outrem, indeterminado, faz-se sentir. A escuta tornou-se a língua para qual sentir significa. Contra a naturalização de um estado de coisas oligárquico e paupérrimo; contra o estado genocida das coisas; contra o cárcere no qual nos encontramos, o xilindró da linguagem anestesiada e plenamente inteligível, comunicada junto à determinação do que é porque que é, no curral de arame farpado do presente do indicativo do verbo ser da baioneta; contra a ontologia do tiro de mão branca em corpo-peito preto. Lá onde a burguesia fede batendo panela, abrindo alas ao fascismo, ofuscando com suas luzes as trevas do status quo, escutar o quê?-Os ecos inapaziguáveis da tormenta social, soando sangue e lama.

While many forms of violence against human beings are considered taboo, others are considered acceptable or even desirable under certain circumstances. Human sacrifice in particular occurs as a form of state-sanctioned killing in societies throughout time and around the world. Despites the wealth of archaeological evidence recovered from ancient Egypt, evidence for human sacrifice is sparse and highly controversial. In this study, I examine archaeological evidence for this practice in ancient Egypt, and human remains that are believed to be the victims of human sacrifice in the early stages of state formation. Human remains from sacrificial victims may shed light on the aspects of identity that led to selection of sacrificial victims. By assessing examples of human sacrifice around the world and exploring the ways that violence such as human sacrifice may become accepted or even celebrated, I place the possible examples of human sacrifice in Egypt within the broader scholarly conversation of violence, anthropology, and archaeology.
Though much of the data from Egypt was excavated over the past few centuries by scholars of various levels of experience, and though standards of excavation and conservation have evolved, it may still be possible to apply modern methods of analysis to old remains and yield new data. In this case, it seems clear that human sacrifice was practiced in ancient Egypt, based on the evidence for skeletal trauma on many of the remains, but that the Egyptians viewed human sacrifice as very different from the violence expected of the king, as shown in images of the Egyptian king heroically defending Egypt or in the popular smiting motif. By exploring the possibilities of old data to reveal new information, we may greatly expand our knowledge not only of the Egyptians but of human societies through history and around the world.

El libro está integrado por ocho capítulos que contienen distintas apreciaciones de la violencia partiendo de distintas y muy particulares ópticas. Cada texto es independiente de los demás, a pesar de  contener ciertos vínculos temáticos con el resto, así como entrecruces y discordancias que serán dignas de análisis por parte del lector.


CONTENIDO

La hermenéutica analógica y su aplicación a nuestro ámbito: el tema de la violencia en México 
Mauricio Beuchot

Violencia y modernidad. Declive y sistematización
Francisco Castro Merrifield

Ventanas sobre la peste. Resistencia a Homero y Hegel
Ramón Kuri Camacho

Violencia extrema o violencia necesaria: Benjamin y Nietzsche
Pablo Lazo Briones

Metafísica, violencia y ontología
Mario Teodoro Ramírez

El porqué de la violencia desde la filosofía moral
Virgilio Ruíz Rodríguez

Sangre, vacío y esperanza. La violencia y el mal estado del Estado
Héctor Sevilla Godínez

Acción, Responsabilidad y Violencia
José Alfonso Villa Sánchez

In this first volume of her theory of modern society, Gesa Lindemann traces the historical emergence of the human body-individual and its institutionalization in human rights, analyzes the structural characteristics of horizontal differentiation, and, finally, foregrounds the general legitimation theory of the ethos of human rights as well as the social criticism it makes possible and structurally necessary.
Three aspects are of particular importance to the author. First: modern society is characterized by a morally charged demarcation between persons and other beings. Second: an analysis of modern sociation must include the constitutive significance of violence for the formation of social order. Third: modern sociation is characterized by extraordinarily dynamic technical developments, which are largely driven by the economy.

The relationship of the natural environment to war has long been the subject of study, but its connection to atrocity crimes in particular has received far less attention. In this chapter I explore the rich literature on the role natural resources play in shaping violence, examining it through two broad areas of focus that define the scholarship: scarcity and abundance. In doing so, I provide an overview of the key thematic debates linking resources to violence, from early Malthusian concerns over demographic pressures to more recent focus on climate change and urbanization.

Any consideration of Animal Farm must start from the fact that the text is a fairy story. The feature of fable, defined by a millennial tradition, allows Orwell to write a work in which moral, social and political meaning transcends the historical events allegorically referred to, the Russian Revolution and its outcomes in Stalinism, to put itself in universal terms.
In this sense, Animal Farm can be read in the key of sociology and political philosophy by referring to Walter Benjamin’s Zur Kritik der Gewalt (Critique of Violence, 1921). In this essay Benjamin argues that the social order, and the legal order it expresses, is affirmed and preserved through violence. In the words of Benjamin, to the revolutionary moment, representing what he calls “divine violence”, follows the “mythical violence”: a connection between the “lawmaking” / “law-preserving” violence and the establishment of “the State power”.
This logical-dialectical oscillation is exemplified in Animal Farm. At the promise of a happy society for the animals liberated, with the uprising against the master, follows the slow and unstoppable establishment of a dictatorship of some of them, the pigs, on all the others.
The decisive point in this process is the writing of the 7 commandments: the fundamental rules of the new social order that represent the Law as the guarantor of the order itself and the source of the social memory. Even before the use of repressive violence, represented by dogs at their service, pigs employ a subtle violence by intervening on the commandments and modifying the contents to their advantage. The manipulation of the legal sphere coincides with the manipulation of social memory.
Animal Farm is, in this perspective, a complex allegory of social order developed on multiple levels. It is a fairy tale in the sense of Phaedrus: a “slave’s tale”, we could say: a story written by the losers of History. It is a narrative representation of the “force of law” in Derrida's sense: “a performative and therefore interpretative violence” affirmed through writing and related to the “mystical foundation of authority”. And, lastly, it is a bitter apologue on the distance that always separates Justice from Law and the consideration of Law as an instrument of power, domination and oppression.

Most histories of American policing ignore the institutional problems posed by administrative and police discretion, especially as a result of the American federalist system. Such problems were strikingly apparent in the Freedom Rides of May 1961, which prompted numerous institutional conflicts between local, state, and federal entities, who appealed to divergent conceptions of what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., called “the whole problem of federalism, the location of the police power.” During the Freedom Rides, the United States government—the STATE—failed to behave as a unitary actor due to competing conceptions of the police power. Examining the Freedom Rides through the lens of the police power shatters the reified "state" in the history of American policing. This kaleidoscopic view of "state" power problematizes the classic Weberian formulation of the state monopoly on violence. Such a view exposes the "state's" intrinsic nature and internal anxieties, which impact its responses to external stimuli. To shatter the reified "state" is to restore the faces and identities of its constituents, and to reintroduce contingency to its history. Only then can we hope to understand the nature of the "state"—and policing—in all its irreducible complexity, messiness, and humanity.

This annual academic lecture series, hosted by the School of Religious Studies at McGill University, is in memory of my late father, Seymour David Steinman, who was a graduate of McGill University (BA 1959, BCL 1964). My father was highly interested in current events and was intrigued by the disciplines of political science, religion and history. In his later years, he had been enrolled in a Masters (MA) program at McGill in the department of Jewish Studies. He was concerned by the ongoing problem of anti-Semitism and its impact on Jewish communities worldwide.

The goal of this lecture series is to bridge together my PhD research with my father’s personal interest in social diversity and the problem of systemic discrimination that targets minority groups and vulnerable populations in the contemporary world. As a doctoral student specializing in the domain of Religion, Ethics and Public Policy, I believe that the subject-matter of the event is highly relevant to the present-day social climate of increasing racial, ethnic and religious discrimination in Western democracies.

This lecture series will take place on an annual basis during each Fall semester, beginning this year (2019). The event will run for FOUR (4) consecutive weeks.

Below is a scheduled list of the lecture dates and the guest speakers assigned to each night:


THURSDAY OCTOBER 24, 2019

W.Y. Alice Chan, Director & Co-Founder of the Centre for Civic & Religious Literacy (CCRL)

​Víctor Muñiz-Fraticelli, Faculty of Law & Department of Political Science, McGill University

~Moderator: Dr. André Gagné


WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 30, 2019

Dr. André Gagné, Department of Theological Studies, Concordia University

Dr. Martin Geoffroy, CÉGEP Édouard-Montpetit, Director of CEFIR

~Moderator: Dr. Daniel M. Cere


THURSDAY NOVEMBER 7, 2019

Dr. Shauna Van Praagh, Faculty of Law, McGill University

Rabbi Adam Scheier, Congregation Shaar Hashomayim

~Moderator: Lauren V. Steinman


THURSDAY NOVEMBER 14, 2019

Dr. Nathan B. Oman, William & Mary Law School

Dr. Morton Weinfeld, Department of Sociology, McGill University

~Moderator: Dr. Eric Jarvis

The lectures will take place from 7:00 – 9:30 pm in the Chapel of the McGill School of Religious Studies Birks Building, located at 3520 University Street. A question and discussion period will follow, as well as a reception in the Senior Common Room. There will be two guest speakers presenting separate lectures on each night. The lectures will be on a specific theme related to questions of hate, discrimination, extremism and violence that targets religious communities as well as other minority groups. Lectures will examine issues concerning Christian fundamentalism and extremism, Neo-Nazism and white supremacy, Islamophobia, Bill 21 and Quebec society, secularism, religious freedom, religious visibility in the public sphere, hate speech, religious/ethnic minority rights in democratic societies, Anti-Semitism, LGBTQ rights, and movements of Jewish fundamentalism extremism.

The central aim of this annual lecture series symposium is to bring people together to honour my father’s memory in the pursuit of knowledge of a topic that is highly pertinent to today’s increasingly fragmented world. Ultimately, my hope is to stimulate dialogue between Professors, students and other members of the public who are interested in a topic that is of great relevance to the domains of politics, sociology, public policy, and religion more generally.

**For More Information on the Lecture Series, Please Visit: https://steinmanmemoriallectures.weebly.com/

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