so in my entry yesterday, i was looking at my mathematical proof that violence is a manifestation of power, and as such is productive since power is produtive.
but i ran into a glitch in my simplistic formula.
arendt contends: "power and violence are opposites; (where one rules absolutely, the other is absent. violence appears when power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance)."
hmm...i have to think about this some more. and most likely reread that passage to get a better grasp on it. but later on, she contends that violence is stronger than (political) power. and she also writes that violence can be ethicopolitically justified (read: justified in political usages; she's not talking in terms of domestic/family violence, rape, etc.) and therefore she supports violence used in activism, so long as it falls within certain parameters. this would imply that although she sets up this binary (well, it's more of a continuum i guess?) she's not actually saying one is good while the other is bad. i need to reread and think some more.
and also, i was thinking about our good friend walter benjamin (fyi, he was german, so it's pronounced "ben-ya-meen" - i wish i could contend that my last name had a special pronunciation different from what it looks like) and how he says that the state regulates violence and retains a "monopoly" on it. and feminists, particularly "second-wave" feminists have asserted that violence is the realm of men. and if we agree that violence should not be relegated as belonging to a certain group of people, wouldn't it then make sense that feminists might want to consider the use of violence in resistance?
Posted by speck025 at March 11, 2005 2:58 PM