Making Sense of Hannah Arendt's "On Violence": Modernity, World-System and Violence
Creators: name: Ekhvaia, Luka
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: 160609 Political Theory and Political Philosophy
subject: FOS: Political science
subject: 200206 Globalisation and Culture
subject: FOS: Other humanities
subject: 80606 Global Information Systems
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: 220319 Social Philosophy
subject: FOS: Philosophy, ethics and religion
subject: 160806 Social Theory
subject: FOS: Sociology
subject: 220208 History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences
subject: 160805 Social Change

description: After the Second World War, it slowly became clear that the implementation of violence had been “decentralized”. If during XIX and half of XX century violence vastly took place in the territories of great powers and the central actors of world politics (even inviolable USA and the UK were plagued on their territories), in the 70s of XX century we have witnessed a cardinal shift as violence started to spread more extensively among the third world, underdeveloped and transitional countries. The epicenters of violence had been shifted from the “civilized” world into the “uncivilized” world. Conventionally and commonly, this shift was anticipated as a decline of violence by researchers like Arendt herself. Nevertheless, I am suggesting that through careful examination of the central political events unfolding after the 70s this perspective lacks cogency. For this, I will examine such regions as the post-soviet region and the Middle East.<br> *** <br>Noam Chomsky’s ontological evaluation of the Cold War is decoding its essence and contradicts with the concept of deterrence which Arendt suggested: “The compact was that the US would be free to carry out violence and terror and atrocities with few limits in its own domains, and the Russians would be able to run their own dungeon without too much US interference. So the Cold War in effect was a war of the US against the Third World, and of Russia against its much smaller domains in Eastern Europe.” The discernible and impregnable fact is that the Cold War was profitable for both main actors of international politics and the ideological antagonism between them was disguising this predicament. The two leading forces of the globalized world installed and maintained the bipolar system that gave them a possibility to control their share of the world. Arendt’s concept of deterrence is not fully encapsulating the current global political crisis. Instead of stressing the role of hegemony in constructing world politics, she is asserting that deterrence can guarantee peace worldwide. <br>*** <br>In the smart machine age, the central front of resistance are social networks, the revolutions have moved from their traditional spaces such as streets and places of public gatherings and now it is running through the Internet. Mutiny and rebellion are less and less followed by the rivers of blood and armed conflict; revolutions have lost their organic intrinsic structure and became a spectacle and part of the simulation. The contemporary forms of the revolution have nothing to do anymore with a political or socio-economic fracture and became a synonym for shifting the power from one ruler to another. In modern times rebellions are blemished with lurking agreements among various influential groups and the system brutally cuts an entrance to politics for the innocent and uncorrupted forces. The next stage of development of the system can be displayed not only by disappearance and dematerialization of the ruling force but also by fading exploited entities, “The era of hegemony is the era of the cyber system. It governs, it regulates, but it does not dominate”. This is how Baudrillard’s vision of modernity can be theorized: “There are no longer any exploited or dominated. There is something else, something much harder to overtake by surprise. It is harder to critique as well, because critical thought is devitalized in this case”.