Contested Understandings of Violence and Entanglements of Epistemic, Symbolic and ‘Bare’ Violence

Violence is always contested. It is the object of cultural struggles that determine which violence is legitimate and which is illegitimate and, therefore, which experiences of violence can be publicly expressed, receive attention and recognition, and which are silenced. Thus, hegemonic narratives can themselves appear violent to those whose experience of violence is not recognised. They are epistemologically violent when victims are silenced and they are symbolically violent when the victims' experiences of violence and trauma are ignored, denied or disavowed. Symbolic and epistemological violence can also legitimise physical and psychological violence retrospectively or in advance, e.g. by disqualifying and dehumanising victims or reversing the victim-perpetrator dichotomy by presenting victims as (potential) perpetrators (e.g. as ‘terrorists’).

Cultural struggles over the interpretation of violence are sociologically revealing because they negotiate how violence is socially defined and what is recognised as an experience of violence. They are sites where the social conditions of what violence ‘is’ are challenged and contested. Since violence is socially thematised in these struggles, they also show how violence is socially formed and expressed.

I will explore these entanglements of epistemic, symbolic and sheer violence in the struggles over the interpretation of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After 7 October, the violence in the conflict was no longer forgotten, but became the subject of heated debates in the global public and questioned the self-image of Western states as liberal, democratic and non-violent orders. By regarding Israel/Palestine as a conflict of world society I will put the often neglected meaning of violence at the centre of the sociological analysis of world society and analyse the conflict as a long-term consequence of European imperialism.