Chapter Abstract
Why does Politics turn to violence? This chapter argues that violence is a complex and diverse phenomenon, and that even determining what can be labelled as violence is contested, and that its meaning has changed over time. It cautions against seeing violence as a rupture in an otherwise non-violent context, insisting instead that there are often long and deeply embedded histories lurking beneath this violence, which are obscured when we focus on the moment of rupture. Focusing on killing in wartime as an illustrative example, this chapter traces how individuals are socialised to kill and how this killing is rationalised. At the same time, the chapter examines the euphemisms that are used in debates about war to conceal this killing, and the racist language that is used to constitute certain populations as more killable than others, and the collective memories that are cultivated in order to remember or to forget this violence.
Additional reading
Bartov, Omer (1996) Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bartov reflects on the holocaust and modernity.
Bourke, Joanna (1999a) An Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in Twentieth Century History, London: Granta.
The book gives an overview of the ways in which British, American, and Australian soldiers experienced combat.
Bourke, Joanna (2016), Wounding the World: How the Military and War Games Invade Our Lives, London: Virago.
Reflections on the militarization of British and American societies, and what can be done to prevent it.
Braudy, Leo (2003) From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Beginning in the Middle Ages and ending with twenty-first-century global terrorism, this book explores the ways in which European and American cultures have established the military ethos. Masculinity is at the heart of his explanations.
Dower, John W. (1986) War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, New York: Faber and Faber.
This is the best book comparing the experiences of American and Japanese servicemen in combat.
Fussell, Paul (1990) Wartime. Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This is an analysis of war psychology in the Second World War.
Hughes, Matthew and William J. Philpott (eds) (2006) Modern Military History, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
This is the clearest textbook-introduction to modern military history.
Keegan, John (2004 [1978]) The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme, London: Pimlico.
This is the classic study in battle psychology and the changing experience of combat over time.
King, Anthony (2013) The Combat Soldier: Infantry Tactics and Cohesion in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
King details the changes in the ‘new military’ of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Merridale, Catherine (2000) Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Russia, London: Granta Books.
This is an indispensable study of Russia experiences of war.
Overy, Richard (1999) The Road to War, London: Penguin Books.
This books provides a clear summary of the main arguments about the political and diplomatic origins of modern war.