PROJECT OUTLINE:

Language is not only used to describe or threaten to inflict violence. It can itself be used as a form of violence. Speech act theory has so far largely ignored the harmful potential of words: while it views speaking as an act, it fails to account for the ability to inflict harm through speech. Formal pragmatics even go so far as to define violence and language as antipodes. Proceeding from the assumption that communication bears a constructive as well as a destructive potential with regard to social processes, this project seeks to analyze the concept and scope of linguistic violence.

The previous funding phase focused on the dimensions of omission and emptiness by studying the performativity of silence ('how to do things with nothing') and the figure zero in the context of how a sign denoting the absence of a number evolved into a sign designating a particular number. This project meant revising the 'constructivist' and 'generativist' conflation in concepts of the performative as the dimensions of experience and passivity often remain critically underexplored. It became clear that performative theory can be corrected not merely with regard to the 'generativist paradigm' and 'constructivist flair' dimension but also by taking into consideration the fact that our speech does not merely create and confirm social relationships but can also harm or destroy them. The project seeks to explore this violent dimension of speech (and silence).

The following three core questions form the basis of our interest. Firstly, why can words do us harm? We suspect that the answer might lie in the 'dual corporeality' of people, by virtue of their physical and social constitution. Secondly, in what ways do words exert linguistic violence? Here we aim to analyze the social logic, rhetorical techniques, and 'grammars' of verbal harm in connection with 'practices of denial'. Thirdly, how does the omission of speech, that is silence, inflict harm? Here two main dimensions of silence can be analyzed: the offensive activity of the perpetrator and the violence suffered by the victim as they fall silent.


Sub-project 1: Symbolic violence: Hegel and the 'master-slave' dialectic (Hannes Kuch)

The 'master-slave' dialectic proposed by G.W.F. Hegel in his Phenomenology of Spirit forms the starting point of my investigations. Reintroduced to philosophical discourse by Alexandre Kojève, the 'master-slave' dialectic has been highly influential, especially with regard to twentieth century French philosophy but also in current debates on social theory. Referring to the overarching concept of 'negating the other', a number of theoreticians such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Jacques Lacan, Jessica Benjamin, and Judith Butler were able to interpret the relationships between identity and alterity, subjectivation and objectification, indifference and dependence in their own ways.

Following an historical outline of the reception and influence of the 'master-slave' motif, I would like to shed more light on the notions of symbolic power or violence. From a (post-)Hegelian perspective I wish to investigate the pivotal question of how violence, power, asymmetry, or destructivity are to be understood within the framework of relationships of recognition. According to my interpretation of the 'master-slave' relationship, the master does not merely want to determine the slave's actions. It is also necessary for him to subjugate the slave as slave in order to be recognized as master. Symbolic violence is not coercive but degrading; it leads to symbolic power by establishing a recognized status of superiority.

The effectiveness of this symbolic power structure is to be investigated from a performative perspective which takes into consideration that symbols and rituals do not 'express' or 'represent' power in this dimension but generate it in the first place. The power structure is performative because third parties play an important role as spectators: the third party here denotes the systematic place which turns the degrading or subjugating action into a performance.

With the help of a grammar of symbolic power, I aim to identify different modes of symbolic power. 'Saying' and 'showing', or discourse and gesture, describe two different ways of performing symbolic violence. The focus here lies not only on speech that does something (the speech act) or actions that say something (rituals, gestures, symbolic actions, etc.), but also on gestures that appear through speech (such as metaphors). I wish to illuminate these dimensions with the help of 'exemplary scenes' from the history of slavery: juridical declarations of the slave status that reduced the slave to a thing illustrate the aspect of 'spoken' violence; practices of corporeal punishment serve as examples of 'shown' violence; the loss of one's proper name, robbing slaves of their linguistic place in society, can be described as a gesture of violence pertaining to language.


Sub-project 2: Symbolic Vulnerability - The ethics and violence of speech (Steffen Kitty Herrmann)

As creatures of flesh and blood we are always exposed to others in matters of life and death. The threat to our lives extends beyond our physical vulnerability into our existence as symbolic creatures. From the harrowing experience of torture over the slap in the face to verbal insults - these instances show that we are symbolically vulnerable. This vulnerability is largely rooted in the realm of signs and refers to our social life. The primary focus lies not on the pain from the gaping wound but on the ordeal suffered at the hands of the other who inflicts the injury on us.

Taking Hegel's slave figure and Levinas' hostage figure as a starting point, our research shows that human vulnerability refers to an existence that transcends the limits of our bodies to rely on an anterior dependence on others. We rely on being addressed by others - symbolically and most often through language - because this constitutes our social life to begin with. We, in turn, are also always responsible for others on the basis of this inevitable social exposure. Our social existence is thus constituted by an existential-ethical interplay between the desire for recognition and the challenge of responsibility.

Keeping in mind this background of our dependence and exposure, it is my aim to explore the social sense of our speech, which by and large aims at creating a sense of proximity, contact, and security. Greetings, proper names, and introductions serve to open a perspective on our speech that does not primarily convey information but generates our social bodies. In this context, it is important not to neglect the limits of our linguistic order. They highlight that our speech can only ever exist with a view to a deficit that leaves the other's desire unsated - the responsibility for the other can thus never come to an end.

Our vulnerability towards others is most evident in the symbolic violence inflicted through words. In contrast to physical violence based on strength and destruction, symbolic violence relies on power and productivity. This makes symbolic violence primarily transformative rather than destructive: it is first and foremost an act of demotion. As such, symbolic violence relies heavily on a third party, which establishes the very power relation that allows one person to demote another. Demotions can range from disdain to dehumanization and show that our symbolic vulnerability is lastly not less real or profound than our physical susceptibility: it can lead to social death.


Sub-project 3: Falling silent: On the negative - and positive - power of silence (Alice Lagaay)

This sub-project is guided by the hypothesis that linguistic violence can be inflicted through the activity of speech as well as the passivity of silence. However, we must also take into consideration the subversive power of silence that is inherent to structures of violence and power. Our research will consider five perspectives: (1) Hurting through silence: this section will investigate the negative consequences of silence in intersubjective contexts, such as identifying the conditions of verbal exclusion that might lead to social death. (2) Hurting by concealing: secrets and taboos. Secrets, for instance, may turn into objects of fascination, serving as a plane for imagined or real fears. Therein lies their power to offend. A secret may become loaded with meaning to an extent that may have little to do with the actual content of the secret. (3) Sovereign silence: the sovereign silence of the powerful also embodies a form of suppression; this includes the institutional silence of authorities which define the rules but remain themselves not accessible. (4) Silence as the consequence of violence: this section analyzes the state of not-speaking or being unable to speak as a reaction to violence as well as the 'speechlessness of the suppressed' (from whom no speech is expected). (5) The subversive power of silence: Lastly, we will focus on the provocative refusal to adhere to social norms of speech. This form of silence bears the potential of performatively invalidating prevalent norms or social power structures.


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