Political Violence: A Psychoanalytic (Ethical) Perspective

Given the violent civil turmoil of 17^th century England and the belief that the state of nature was a war of all against all, Thomas Hobbes argued that a society needed a leviathan to enforce social-political cooperation as citizens pursued their own interests (Ryan, 2012, pp. 411-435). The leviathan is sovereign and, as such, has legitimate authority to threaten or exercise political violence for the sake of political-social stability. Centuries later, Giorgi Agamben (1998), building on the work of Walter Benjamin, argues that the roots and exercise of sovereignty—and its attending law-making and law-preserving actions—are founded in political violence. Perhaps Freud would have agreed with Hobbes and Agamben. He used the Oedipal myth to frame psychosocial development, indicating the seemingly existential developmental reality of ruling through violence—King Laius assures his rule through violence toward his son only to later lose sovereignty by being killed by his son. Freud (1950) also posited that the origin of civilization is based on the killing of the tribal leader-father by the sons who then took over, ruling the people. That political violence is rife in human history does not necessarily mean it is inevitable or essential for political belonging and order, or identical to aggression. Nor does its seeming ubiquity mean it is justifiable.

Here I explore the notion of political violence from a psychoanalytic-phenomenological perspective, arguing that political violence is fundamentally unethical, though, at times, it is an understandable means of seeking justice or emancipation. To make this case, the first step is to explicate what is meant by the notion “political” and depict its attributes, which sets the framework for depicting the developmental origins and attributes of political selves/agencies. From here, I explain what is meant by political violence—its functions and aims—and identify its consequences vis-à-vis political psyches. In this discussion, it