A (Conceptual) History of Violence

The article sketches a general history of the concept of violence, particularly focusing on the most significant turning points in western political thought. My main aim is to question the position according to which in western history violence has been progressively declining, in quantity and quality. My working hypothesis follows Michel Foucault's assumption in Discipline and Punish, according to which a modern society of control is based on the gradual transition from the spectacular medieval manifestation of public violence to a disciplinary system perpetrating non-visible violence. Through this shift violence does not disappear but merely changes its physiognomy, becoming less manifest but not for this reason less present in our economic, social and political relations. As Pierre Bourdieu has shown in a masterly manner, there is a symbolic violence which is not registered in public records and statistics, but which is nonetheless effective and coercive. It is my belief that the diachronic study of the modifications of violence in relation to its changing historical and semantic context will help us to find the most relevant metamorphoses and mystifications of this concept in a western tradition.