GFE brown bag talk with Valentina Ricci
Department: Gender and Sexuality Studies
Date and Time: January 20, 2016 | 12:00 PM-1:30 PMEvent Location: Humanities Gateway 3200
Event Details
The Ontology of Violence: Violence as the Inevitable Restriction of Potential
Minimalist theories of violence, which I group under the label “physicalist views,” usually define it in terms of physical aggression. However, in a groundbreaking article published in 1969, Johan Galtung defined violence as that which is present “when human beings are being influenced so that their actual somatic and mental realizations are below their potential realizations.” Violence, thus, is understood as the difference between the potential and actual realization of a human being, broadly construed. This idea is at the core of the concept of structural or systemic violence, which tries to account for economic and social injustice, racism, sexism, and related socio-political phenomena as forms of violence. In this presentation, I will try to clarify the meaning and implications of the structural view both through a traditional conceptual analysis of the notion of potential and through the examination of some of its applications in feminist and Afro-Pessimist literature. I will then propose a further expansion of our understanding of violence, as the beginning of an argument for the notion that such potential is ultimately impossible to fulfill.
This event is free and open to the public. Light snacks and refreshments will be served.