ABSTRACT
This chapter starts by offering an overview of how violence has been traditionally explained, from notions of end of history, to clash of civilizations, to clash of ignorance, and deconstructive explanations of violence. It then engages Stathis Kalyvas’s notions of different stages of violence, noting the significance of recognizing the different stages in understanding how violence comes to be normalized. It then offers a new categorization of violence, namely ‘metaphysical’ violence, which it argues can be understood as the non-physical building blocks of physical violence. Metaphysical violence as thus explained, notes the author, can be understood in terms of the Kalyvasian ‘process’ of violence, namely the narratives that justify and legitimize violence. In diverging from Kalyvas’s analysis, the author argues that the process of violence has within it different stages that explain the manufacturing of enemies, and the manufacturing of consent to use violence against the designated enemies. Finally, this chapter offers a description of all the chapters in this volume in its ‘Chapter Layout’ section.
