ABSTRACT
‘Violence’ could well serve as a paradigmatical sample of the large family of Austin’s ‘performatives’ – the words which, by the act of naming, create the realities they name. In addition, ‘violence’ is an essentially contested concept that cannot be otherwise since the descriptive and evaluative assertions it implies mix, melt and blend, and cannot be separated. The contest of which the concept of violence is an object concerns the legitimacy of force. ‘Violence’ is illegitimate coercion: more precisely, a coercion that has not gained, or has been denied, legitimacy.
