Violence as storytelling

This chapter focuses on representations of violence, primarily in oral and literary narratives. I describe the narrative logics of reduction, necessity and license that Lois Presser argues promote violence, and I explain Amartya Sen’s theory of violence-promoting (singular) identifications. I discuss media narratives on the “rising level of violence” in Sweden as an example, including objections and counter-narratives. The cultural representations described in this chapter cover a broad spectrum, from eating meat and genocide to cartoons and the children’s book author Astrid Lindgren’s novel Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter.