Discursive violence and real violence

[Eliot Borenstein]

I understand why many people, especially survivors, would find  
discursive arguments about Stalinist violence to be problematic,  
since the discussion of discourse seems to shift categories from the  
real, lived experience of terror, torture, and murder, to categories  
of the verbal and the aesthetic.  However, I seriously doubt that  
Lipovetsky, or any of the many scholars who approach questions of  
violence, genocide, and terror in terms of discourse, are arguing  
that actual violence is the same thing as discursive violence.

The question of discursive violence and real violence is not a  
question of “either/or,” equivalency, or even straightforward cause  
and effect.  Rather, is it really credible that an on-going project  
of actual violence can exist without a corresponding discourse of  
violence? Do violence, terror, and genocide exist in a cultural  
vacuum, leaving no mark except those that can easily be categorized  
as noble (survivors’ testimony) or base (direct incitement to mass  
murder)? Is there really no connection between actual terror and many  
intellectuals' acceptance of (and, at times, complicity in) the  
aesthetic of violence, the metaphor of purgation of the body politic,  
and the apocalyptic rhetoric of the new/old world?

One of the questions people often ask about terror and genocide is  
“How could this happen?” Presumably, the answer does not lie in  
politics alone. I have two caveats here:  1) investigating the  
discourse of violence surrounding or preceding terror is not  
necessarily a matter of assigning blame or responsibility  (though it  
can be), and 2) the search for causes cannot be the only legitimate  
framework for examining the discourse of violence.  Such a limitation  
threatens to reduce the study of mass violence to reflexive moral  
statements that, while compelling, ultimately give us very little.

Thus, for example, I am not offended by Susan Sontag’s analysis of  
“fascinating fascism,” even if she does not stop every few pages to  
remind her reader that fascism is a terrible thing.  I am not  
offended by Agamben’s analysis of the concentration camp as the  
quintessential manifestation of modern biopolitics, even though the  
camps are implicitly placed on a spectrum of phenomena, rather than  
kept in a category entirely unto itself. Nor am I offended by  
“Springtime for Hitler,” or the Sots Art of Komar and Melamid (even  
though, superficially, some of the paintings look like a celebration  
of Stalin). To my  mind, both the ironic and the discursive  
approaches to terror actually rescue the true horror of the  
historical events from the threat of the predictable sameness of  
homily.  Otherwise, dialogue and real thought are closed off:  the  
Holocaust is that which can happen “Never Again,” and we all feel  
righteous asserting this, even as genocide happens again and again.  
Decades of scholarship on the Stalinist Terror have given the world  
the invaluable testimony of survivors, and even participants.  That  
work is still out there--no one is negating it.  But there has to be  
more to the phenomenon than testimony, politics, and statistics.

Eliot Borenstein

Eliot Borenstein
Chair, Russian & Slavic Studies        Director, Morse Academic Plan
New York University                            New York University
19 University Place, Room 203         100 Washington Square East,  903D
New York, NY 10003                           New York, NY 10003
(212) 998-8676 (office)                       (212) 998-8676 (office)
(212) 995-4604 (fax)

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~eb7/index.html

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