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There is something so disturbingly [[tragic ]] in this [[idea ]] of the wealthiest country in the [[world ]] bombing one of the poorest countries. It reminds me of the well-known [[joke ]] [[about ]] the idiot who loses a key in the dark and looks for it beneath the light. When asked why, he says: 'I [[know ]] I lost it over there, but it's easier to look for it here.'But at the same [[time ]] I must confess that the [[left ]] also deeply disappointed me. Falling back into this safe pacifist attitude — violence never stops violence, give peace a [[chance ]] — is abstract and doesn't [[work ]] here. First, because this is not a [[universal ]] rule. I always ask my [[leftist ]] friends who [[repeat ]] that mantra: What would you have said in 1941 with [[Hitler]]. Would you also say: 'We shouldn't resist, because violence never helps?' It is simply a fact that at some point you have to fight. You have to [[return ]] violence with violence. The problem is not that for me, but that this war can never be a solution. ==violent revolution==<blockquote>This acceptance of violence, this "[[political]] suspension of the [[ethical]]," is the [[limit]] of that which even the most "tolerant" [[liberal]] stance is unable to trespass - [[witness]] the uneasiness of "radical" post-colonialist Afro-American studies apropos of [[Frantz Fanon]]'s fundamental insight into the unavoidability of violence in the [[process]] of effective [[decolonization]]. One should [[recall]] here [[Fredric Jameso]]n's idea that violence plays in a revolutionary process the same [[role]] as worldly wealth in the Calvinist [[logic]] of [[predestination]]: although it has no intrinsic [[value]], it is a [[sign]] of the authenticity of the revolutionary process, of the fact that this process is effectively disturbing the existing [[power]] relations. In [[other]] [[words]], the [[dream]] of the [[revolution]] without violence is precisely the dream of a "[[revolution without revolution]]"(Robespierre). On the other hand, the role of the Fascist [[spectacle]] of violence is exactly opposite: it is a violence whose aim is to PREVENT the [[true]] [[change]] - something spectacular should happen all the time so that, precisely, [[nothing]] would really happen.<ref>Nothing</ref></blockquote> ==More==The [[word]] violence derives from an Indo-European root that refers to [[life]]. The [[natural]] [[instinct]] of violence is thus not a destructive instinct, much less a [[death]] instinct, but a natural life and survival instinct that corresponds to the instinct of [[self]]-preservation in Sigmund [[Freud]]'s first [[theory]] of the [[instincts]]. It involves what Freud saw as a sort of natural "[[imaginary]] cruelty" in 1897 and described in "[[Instincts and Their Vicissitudes]]" (1915c) as [[being]] common to [[humans]] and animals. This instinct's [[goal]] is above all to protect life and the [[narcissistic]] integrity of the [[subject]]. This holds regardless of the potential effects caused secondarily to an [[object]] that as yet has only a narcissistic status in the subject's [[imagination]]. [[Instinctual]] violence has nothing to do with aggressiveness, sadism, or [[hatred]], whose [[libidinal]] components Freud showed to be aimed at an object that had otherwise attained an [[oedipal]] [[genital]] status. In [[Three]] Essays on the Theory of [[Sexuality]] (1905), Freud very clearly showed that this brutal instinct can attract to itself a part of the [[sexual]] instincts, producing [[aggressive]] components. In 1915 he attributed a narcissistic and [[phallic]] [[character]] to violent dynamism and advanced the hypothesis of a logically necessary [[anaclisis]] of the sexual instincts on the brutal self-preservation instincts, so as to reinforce the [[energy]] of the sexual instincts in the direction of [[love]] and [[creativity]]. The role of the instinct of violence was gradually specified in European and American [[psychoanalytic]] studies that since 1960 have focused on a veritable [[metapsychology]] of [[narcissism]]. In La Violence fondamentale (Fundamental violence; 1984) Jean Bergeret, based on such studies and Freud's first hypotheses, proposed an attempted [[synthesis]], forming a theory of instinctual violence. He gave special emphasis to the difficulties Freud encountered in trying to account for the [[stage]] of [[primitive]] violence within the [[totality]] of the [[Oedipus]] [[myth]]. The first [[acts]] of the drama (the oracle of Apollo and the episode of Mount Cithaeron in [[particular]]) bear witness to [[human]] beings' deep intuitive [[awareness]] of their fundamental instinct of brutality in the service of self-preservation. Freud was never [[satisfied]] with his successive theories about the instincts. Rather, he decided to focus on the [[synchronic]] aspect of a [[conflict]] arising between tendencies within the same psychogenetic generation. His theory of instinctual anaclisis, however, would have enabled him to conceptualize a [[diachronic]] conflict pitting the violent [[pregenital]] tendencies against the sexual tendencies, with all the possible configurations linked to fusion, defusion, and the different modes of articulation of these two fundamental groups of instincts. His [[choice]] of a synchronic [[model]] of conflict prevented Freud from better integrating into his [[psychodynamic]] and [[economic]] conception this brutal instinct of violence and [[defense]], which he had nevertheless clearly described. ==See Also==* [[Aggressiveness]]/[[aggression]]* [[Cruelty]]* [[Fort-Da]]* [[Mastery]]* [[Primal scene]]* [[Sadism]]* [[Transgression]] ==References==<references/> * [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1905d). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. SE, 7: 123-243.* ——. (1915c). Instincts and their vicissitudes. SE, 14: 109-140. {{Les termes}}[[Category:Politics]][[Category:Imaginary]][[Category:Freudian psychology]][[Category:Psychoanalysis]][[Category:Edit]]