A Jeanne Site
A Jeanne Site
The Origins of Structural Violence
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: April 8, 2000
Faculty on the Site.
Still in note form. jeanne
Hirschman's Rhetoric of Reaction.
No validity claim, which takes precedence over another claim by refusing to hear it in good faith negates the other claim. For the requirement that legitimacy depends on the good faith hearing of all claims prevents such a conclusion. The claimant who simply refuses to partake in good faith listening forsakes all legitimacy in so doing.
That doesn't mean you don't lose. You do. If the claimant is in a position to use power to not hear your claim, that is harm and it hurts. You lose. But you do not lose all. In a system of law which remains a learning sub-system, there will be other occasions to make your validity claim. So only in a non-learning subsystem is all hope of a good faith hearing lost.
But even in that unhappy context, the denial of your claim does not mean that your work and your efforts are negated. Cornel West in politics of law. Within a social community there will always be tension between the individual who sees other perspectives, other claims, and the overall community which may not accept them. Einstein, Galileo, etc. How many like them were not heard? Ever? In addition to creativity, and freeing oneself from a non-learning approach, timing counts. The community must be able to grasp the new validity claims.
The validity claims with which we are concerned are generall social issues, for we are social theorists. We are critical theorists, ones who include praxis as a part of our goal. That means our validity claims are often based on our wanting to change the system into a more effective and more legitimte system that provides social justice to all. Hence, Roger's statement, that our efforts to establish social justice are negated by the community's support of a structural power that refuses to listen in good faith.
Not so. The present power configuration may negate present efforts. But the persistence of the claim. Even the open embracing of the claim, works toward an eventual good faith hearing. this works in two ways: One by just not going away, we gain a certain legitimacy for our right to be heard. We challenge the legitimacy of the refusal to hear and of the sovereign-based power to refuse. We keep the claim before the community. We do not go gently into the dark night. (Cornel West) and neither does our validity claim.
Second, and perhaps even more importantly during this time of corporations turning us into fungible workers, our upholding of the validity claim that we are unique as humans and deserve to be treated as such, through all, provides a social bond, and provides support for those who share our validity claim. That does not dispel the violence of the structure's refusal to hear; but it does dispel the structure's power to negate us. And it gives us strength, each of us, to hold on to our beliefs and our integrity.
The danger is that we will internalize the structural violence of the system rules, and that we will identify with the personal violence of the one abusing power. To the extent that we identify with the aggression of the aggressor, we are likely to reflect that aggression to others to whom we do not wish to listen in good faith. So our task is to continue to present our validity claim, to continue to make the community aware of our claim, and yet to not internalize the violence which always surrounds the refusal to listen in good faith.
Structural violence originates as personal violence. In the beginning, I am angry, perhaps righteously so. That anger erupts in violence. Over time, I cease to promote hearing, and begin to promote my position. As that happens, patterns of violence are evolving which I fail to see as violent because I understand the underlying causes, and excuse my own behavior. Soon my behavior becomes a pattern, and the memory of the underlying causes disappears. Now we have a structurally violent system, and because I do not intend harm, I fail to see the violence in by behavior. The institution becomes an agent through which I launder my violennce.
To judge by our personal experience alone is to privilege our subjectivity, and to assume that what we know is "the" truth. That is to fail to listen in good faith to other perspectives, to other experiences we did not have. And that is to falsify the "truth" we believe we know, for we have lived it.
But neither do we want to ignore our own experiences and subjectivity. We cannot, in fact, do so. To assume that we can is to falsify the "truth" by an assumption of objectivity which leaves out the human in us.
Personal experience is valid data about our world, as we experience and perceive it. It needs only to be tempered by the data from other exxperiences and perspectives. Statistical analysis and data collection , the planning of unobtrusive ways to discover and group the data we need to measure other experiences and perspectives, and to place them within a broad and representative overview help us to move beyond our personal experience. Theory helps us to distance ourselves from the personal moment that we may grasp more effectively the overview. But our understanding of statistics, methods, and theory spring from our own personal life-world. Neither denigrate nor ignore your life-world as you contemplate social justice.