Revisiting the Imagery of [Political] Violence: a philosophical interpretation

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Associate Professor, School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India.

Abstract

Contemporary critical reflections of violence immensely focus on an `ever war-like condition’ that makes the state of exception a permanent possibility. Most popular perspectives of western political philosophy seem to look at a bigger picture; a bird’s eye-view of the world – looking at violence as violence of war and genocides. Every reflection is directed toward war, violence, here and there, and its effects on various human societies. Having a bigger picture is imminent. Besides this big picture we cannot overlook several micro-pictures. The bigger picture will lose its moral and political justification, this paper commits to argue, unless the claim of a permanent emergency locates itself in the manifold normalizations of everyday life that not just distort political objectivity, corrupt human nature, and create intolerant internal civic culture[s]. These instill in the civil society a dangerous indifference to the pain of the socially/politically vulnerable that greatly threatens the latter’s political sense. The single line of argument here is only when the pathologies of everyday lives is grasped only then we can comprehend more deeply the reality of war and/or violence as a permanent condition.     

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References

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Journal of Philosophical Investigations
Volume 20, Issue 54 - Serial Number 54
Articles
February 2026
Pages 89-106

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