ABSTRACT
The rejection of interpersonal violence has excluded it from the field of explicit discourse both in everyday life and in academic research. Combating such exclusion means first, making the existence of interpersonal violence visible and, second, to analysing it as an ongoing practice produced and reproduced as an integral part of social relations and power structures (Kristeva, 1982; Bourdieu, 1998). Viewed from this perspective, the sensitive nature of interpersonal violence as a topic of study is revealed to be not an innate feature of the phenomenon itself but a quality of the whole societal totality in which it takes place. The legitimization of certain violent acts depends on temporal and spatial locations, institutional regimes and intersectional differences in people’s position in the world. The explanatory models, attitudes toward and means of conceptualizing violence form the conceptual basis and ideological means that drives both the continuation and justification of violence. As long as we do not speak or write about the suffering caused by violence, and as long as we fail to deal with, research and analyse the experiences of violated persons, it will continue to be possible to justify the use of violence as a means of problem solving and maintaining social order (see also Kappeler, 1995). However, the necessity of recognizing and acknowledging experiences of violence does not concern individuals alone, but also communities and societies that need to deal with the effects of violence. The sharing of experiences of violence is thus also a question of both communal and societal relationships and global political orders. Oppressive practices and objectifying attitudes related to interpersonal violence are also present in other social situations, means of knowing and attempts to control and manage the world. They eliminate the possibilities to engage in relationships and inhabit spaces that are based on reciprocity, in which mutual recognition and acknowledgement could be possible. At the same time, they maintain the existence of interpersonal violence as logical – as a behaviour or a practice that can be explained by the circumstances or the characteristics of the victims of violence, and confirm the ways of rejecting and ignoring interpersonal violence as an individual experience, as an institutional and societal phenomenon and as a scientific question. Hence, it is crucial to understand experiences and narratives of violence in relation to institutional practices like structural and symbolic violence, and also reflect on the rejection of interpersonal violence in scientific discourses. Next, we will introduce one possible path to a synthesis. Our approach draws on the conception proposed by Pierre Bourdieu.
