ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relation between two contested and complex concepts, those of 'empire' and 'governing from the distance'. It approaches the question of political violence in relation to 'governing from the distance' from an epistemological perspective, and helps to understand and differentiate political violence. The manifestation of violence looks different, of course, if one looked at the imposition of knowledge and practices in cases of present-day humanitarian intervention or historical forms of colonial and imperial politics. There is an underlying intellectual pattern in European Union (EU) politics that traces through centuries of European history and manifests in a social and political discourse on imperium in which the EU partakes. Since political violence is inevitably an aspect of governing, and even more so of 'governing from the distance', the political responsibility is to mitigate the violence incremental to politics and its consequences.
