The Other as an Adversary

Abstract

Within the framework of the research project “Violence: Scenarios and Processes of Identification”, this paper presents advances in the delimitation of the concept of violence and in the analysis of the meaning of the Other: the other as equal, but at the same time as adversary; the one with whom young people identify, but from a position of adversity. This involves a kind of search for support, but one based on extreme differentiation. The issue of youth confronts us, in all its harshness, with the current sociohistorical problem in its full expression.

The aim is to investigate causes, characteristics, subjective motivations, and categories that may reflect more objectively what we mean when we speak of violence, but framed within a concrete context: the school, and within a specific group: young people.

The dialectic between being and thinking makes it possible to conceive a kind of analytical instrument in which it is not enough to inquire into representations. Although necessary, these do not allow for a complete visualization of the specific problem of peer violence. The objective is to understand the mechanisms that allow social violence to be produced and reproduced through the incorporation of models linked to it, in order to address the contradiction that marks its definition as a negative phenomenon and, at the same time, the existence of social processes that generate models of identification with violence.

Exploring the different modes of bonding and communication that favor processes of identification with violent models will allow us to conclude, provisionally, whether young people currently identify positively with such models and what function these models may have in the reproduction of the system or in its questioning.