Violence and Power

Abstract

The main hypothesis of this paper is based on the historical character of violence, in opposition to biologicist positions concerning it. In order to argue in favor of the historical construction of violence, the concepts of violence and culture in modern contractualist philosophy are analyzed.

Subsequently, the link between violence and culture is examined on the basis of modern sociological theories, taking as central axes Norbert Elias’s concept of the civilizing process and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus.

The paper also analyzes some reflections by Tzvetan Todorov and Pierre Clastres on the construction of American otherness, interpreted from the dominant European Enlightenment narrative.

Finally, this work concludes with an interpretation that seeks to account for the dominant narratives on otherness in our region, with special emphasis on the relationships between the power of categorization—the classification of “others”—and its indissoluble link with the exercise of physical and symbolic violence throughout our local and regional history.