Violence as Abjection

In this essay, I will attempt to elaborate on the impact of violence as abjection to individuals and to the society as well as on the dynamics of understanding and interpreting meaning from the pain and suffering caused by violence.

In order to construe violence as abjection, we must first characterise abject and abjection. In defining what is abject, Kristeva (1982) said,

“There looms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated.... The abject has only one quality of the object-- that of being opposed to I.” (p. 1)

In Creed’s (1993) exposition on horror and femininity, she described the place of the abject as that

“where meaning collapses, the place where I am not...[It] threatens life, it must be radically excluded from the place of the living subject, propelled away from the body and deposited on the other side of an imaginary border which separates the self from that which threatens the self.” (p. 65)

When a person is thrashed into the realm of the abject, his imaginary borders disintegrate and the abject, that is violence, becomes a tangible threat because his identity system and conception of order has been disrupted. As Kristeva (1982) theorises, it is not the "lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs the identity, system, order." (p. 4) Yet, because the object of abjection lies close by but cannot be assimilated (Kristeva 1982, p. 3), a person is both drawn to and repelled by the abject; such repulsion expressed in terms of nausea, adrenalin and fear (Green 1999). In other words, the abject is something that is recognised in some way familiar but its existence is confronting (Sontag 1994, p. 2). To demonstrate how it manipulates or controls and how it subverts boundaries, laws, and conventions, Kristeva (1982) further theorises that "the abject is perverse because it neither gives up nor assumes a prohibition, a rule, or law; but turns them aside, misleads, corrupts; uses them, takes advantage of them, the better to deny them."(p. 15)

A very concrete example of violence as abjection is when a person sees his own blood outside of his body. Of course, that is disagreeable because blood is supposed to be in our bodies. Foucalt’s (1977) graphic and sensationalising portrayal of the ripping of the flesh which Daniel (1996) termed as “pornography of violence” exemplifies a very direct representation of violence as abjection. Drawing from Kristeva’s portrayal of the abject, Scarry (1985) compares the reaction of a victim of violence who bears the burden of the pain to that of the child ripped out from maternal connection and propelled to physical isolation. Thus, a sufferer drives his ego to externalise or to separate from the violence that causes his pain and suffering. In this way, abjection or the process of externalisation is a way of coping up or to relieve oneself of the pain.

In her exposition on pain and suffering, Scarry (1985) lays out the effect of violence as abjection, “...physical pain does not simply resist language but actually destroys it, bringing about an immediate reversion to a state anterior to language, to the sounds and cries a human being makes before language is learned.” (p. 4). Thus pain isolates the sufferer and drains him of cultural resources, particularly language. However, the aftermath of violence produces not only physical pain that is experienced at the level of the flesh (Scarry 1985) but also visceral, emotional and somatic effects (Green 1999; Wacquant 2004; Doug 2006).

There are many different types of violence, ranging from interpersonal forms such as murder, hate crimes, battery, torture, rape and leisure violence to genocide, civil conflicts, and international wars at the macrosocial level. But what is violence? Dictionaries offer ambiguous and intangible definitions. Its definition and usage to describe a whole range of events, feelings and harm have been moulded in varied ways, each according to the theorist’s field of study (Stanko 2003, p. 2).

Even historical events show how violence has been seen and portrayed in multiple lenses (Archer & Jones 2003). In describing it as an elusive ...

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Even historical events show how violence has been seen and portrayed in multiple lenses (Archer & Jones 2003). In describing it as an elusive concept, Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois (2004) contend that violence is “nonlinear, productive, destructive and reproductive... mimetic,” such that a “continuum of violence” embraces “chains, spirals and mirrors of violence.” (p. 1). This has evolved an eclectic and complex anthology of the nature of violence. This intricate rubric exemplifies violence as incapable of categorisation, something that can be “everything and nothing; legitimate or illegitimate; visible or invisible; necessary or useless; senseless and gratuitous or utterly rational and strategic (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2004, p. 2), also echoed by Halpern (2005) and Parry (2005) who both contended that the characterisation of violence depends largely on the political context and who has the power to define its legitimacy or illegitimacy or whether a violent act is justified or not, or to be valourised or condemned.

From a tedious search for a working definition to proximate the complexity of this concrete human behavior and to give some focus to this paper, I chose Brie’s (2008) simple definition:

“…[violence] consciously seeks to physically or mentally destroy another person. Violence consciously or purposefully breaks into the inner existential shelter of another person…the body of a human being.” (p. 239)

From this definition, it is implied that the human body or the self is threatened by something that is not part of it. As such, violence is considered as abjection. Although Brie’s definition explores pain and suffering inflicted on the mental aspect of a person, yet again, it should stressed that violence should not be limited to physical injuries but should also encompass any assault on the dignity, personhood and self-esteem of a person (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois (2004). Regardless of the type of violence, suffering greatly damages subjectivity (Kleinman & Lock 1997).

As a ubiquitous element that seems to lurk at every corner, violence in all its forms is intricately woven into the micro- and macro-social fabric of our world at multiple levels and impacts individuals and societies at different levels. As Tallis (1988) aptly puts it, “the history of the world is a history of pain (p. 11). As Beneduce, et al. (2009) posited, the violence exerted against an individual has always a collective impact and its dimension often referred to as “social wounds” (p. 9). The debilitating effects of violence to individuals, groups, and nations have been extensively studied in many different arenas. It has been shown that violence brings about profound and usually enduring material consequences in an individual and in the society (Bowling 1998; Green 1999; Archer & Jones 2003; Stanko 2003).

Violence trails both sides of a war, soldiers who are fed into killing fields (Scarry 1985) and the dehumanisation of enemies which glorify struggle and sacrifice and justify brutal massacres, torture and other atrocities such as rape (Das 1995; Dawson 1994; Jeganathan 2000; Edkins 2003). To illustrate another form of effect, Doug (2006) explains that people who have been subjected to extreme pain develop illnesses which serve as memorialisation of violence that is more visceral and instinctive rather than a conscious effort. Century old slave systems institutionalised physical, sexual, and emotional violence that eroded a person’s humanity. The fear of a Third World War that could escalate to nuclear warfare sows a global fear of annihilation and extinction, not only of certain nations but of the earth.

Individuals who are subjected to violence primarily react to the physical pain but also respond to assaults of their subjectivity (Kleinman & Lock 1997). Because the body is the empirical quintessence of the self and selfhood is its symbolic embodiment that represents the personification and materialization of otherwise invisible qualities of personhood, the whole embodiment, that is physical and symbolic, respond in many different ways when the body is assaulted or humiliated (Waskul and der Riet‌ 2002). A ghost detainee who is not only subjected to torture but also other forms of coercive treatment and interrogation is relegated “outside the protections of any applicable and enforceable legal regime” because he is “separate from one’s body... from one’s family, community, and other support networks” (Parry 2005, p. 74). Persecution through physical assault, physical and mental torture, humiliation and social deprivation undermines faith and dignity of the persecuted (Ghadirian 1994, p. 56).

It can be seen then that pain is not just a sensation that merely resides in the embodiment of a single person, but it is also a condition that that has been bred and entrenched by overarching structures of power in the society. Green (1999) argues that long-term systemic violence that involve gender, ethnic and class discriminations create a space for political violence.

How then does an individual or a society understand and interpret pain and suffering and glean significant meanings from violence? Despite Scarry’s (1985) position of the incommunicability of pain, Das (1996) insists that there are alternative forms of language and mediation that can be used to understand pain. Unspoken and unwritten social knowledge, cultural legacies and social support including social and cultural ambivalence all help in defining the meaning of violence as imbedded in its particular social context (Stanko 2003, p. 11). As Sontag (1964) asserted, interpretation is not a mental activity that takes place in a “timeless realm of capabilities but within a historical view of consciousness.” Thus it could be a road to healing and catharsis or sometimes, a cowardly and stifling process.

Stanko (2003, p. 11) said that, to understand pain and suffering, one must consider the act itself, the relationships of participants to one another, the location of the act and the outcome of the resultant damage. When taken altogether, a persons learns more from the meaning of violence.

Frankl (1963) eloquently said that "Suffering ceases to be suffering in some way at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice." (p. 179). Thus understanding comes through suffering. A person interprets violence based upon knowledge of his body, selfhood and situated social interaction (Stanko 2003). Because a person constantly interacts with his outside world as well as his inner being, his reactions to pain and suffering cover a whole range of his make-up: psychological, physiological, social, and spiritual elements (Ghadirian 1994).

Tilly (1997) places weight on a persons’ sense of identity which influences his interpretation of violence. According to Tilly (1997), identity consists of experience, social ties, role, group and network affiliation plus a public representation of that experience. How a person manages his violent experience and derives meaning from it depends upon his sociocultural orientation, personal belief, expectations and experiences (Stanko 2003). Getting a sensous, visceral and emotional understanding violence was succinctly explained by Wacquant (2004) who exemplified a boxer’s continuous exposure to pain as a means of internalisation, rationalisation of inflicting pain and minimising his own.

Giving meaning to a terrible experience such as violence alleviates its dreadful impact. A person also draws from personal experience and circumstances to enhance his capability to seek support through “stronger integration and involvement in the life of the family and community”, and in return, a supportive network increases chance of redemption and recovery; the opposite of which will heighten negative effects and limit coping abilities (Ghadirian 1994, p. 51).Wilkinson (2001) presented evidence suggesting that, when faced with the 'brute fact' of a world where there appears to be too much suffering, people are always moved to make this phenomenon productive for thought and action.

Bowling (1998) asserts that since reality could be construed in dissimilar ways because of ideological differences, incompatibility and disagreements produce dilemmas on which is right or wrong. However, the society should guard itself against distortion of truth and manipulation of the public conscience as a means of discrediting victims and justifying violent atrocities and persecution, such being “vehicles of prejudicial objectives (Ghadirian 1994, p. 56), thus warping any meaningful sense that could be gleaned from pain and experience. What should be emphasised now is not pain, as pain is certain, but the moral sensibility of the society in viewing violence and pain (Das 1997, p. 70). A person that could locate his personal troubles in the wider social milieu ceases to fear the uncertainty because he realises that “it is no longer necessary to face these troubles in isolation (Bowling 1998, p. 11). Understanding different kinds of pain and the interrelationships of personal, political and structural instruments of violence should be fully understood to allow meaningful interpretation for rebuilding, reconstruction and redemption of individuals and societies.

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