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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.

<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>

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.

* [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1905d). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. SE, 7: 123-243.