Violent conditions: The injustices of being

Abstract

Violent conditions burn in the background of daily life. Consider the slow wounds of ecological violence, the crumbling cityscapes of austerity, or the mental trauma inflicted by capitalism. In this paper, we provide an account for understanding violence in and through conditions, drawing on the work of Johan Galtung and Gilles Deleuze in particular. Violent conditions are not the property of individuals or monolithic structures: they are the existential climates by which localized subjects and worlds condense into being. In making this argument, we not only advance scholarship on the geographies of violence, but also make a sustained case for how and why condition is an important social, political, and ontological heuristic. Our examination is framed by unearthing the complex conditions and discontents of capitalism. Violent conditions forcefully constrain, traumatize, and poison, the very resources of our becoming. Accordingly, we provide a map for exploring the geographies of violent conditions across four interrelated sections. (1) The Virtual, (2) Truncated Life, (3) Time, (4) Common Sense. Collectively, these explain how violence is embedded in the flesh and bones of our worlds. The paper finishes by discussing the injustices of being and the possibilities for peace.

Exposing Necroburbia: Suburban Relocation, Necropolitics, and Violent Geographies in Manila

“…The proliferation of these spaces is hinged upon the normalisation of oppression of marginalised populations, as if their suffering is expected and commonsensical. Heeding to Laurie and Shaw (2018:15) who encourage us to “render common sense as nonsense”, this paper attempts to unsettle the normalised brutalities endured by evictees and reveal the deception enabling their dispossession. In the Philippines, public discourse tends to cast informal settlers as “criminals” worthy of dispossession and/or “spoiled” and maswerte pa nga (lucky enough) to be provided housing.…”

“…Therefore, violence should not be viewed as mere acts or outcomes, but also as “processual and unfolding moment(s)” (Springer and Le Billion 2016:2). In moving forward, Laurie and Shaw (2018:9) suggest the notion of “violent conditions” as an approach in “navigating the ontopolitics of violence”. This approach transcends the binary between direct and structural violence, and advocates for exposing multiple forms of violent geographies that “forcefully constrain, traumatize and poison the very resources of our becoming” (Laurie and Shaw 2018:8).…”

Meaningful life in the time of Corona-economics

“…Of course, there is calculus behind the callousness. The capacity to hurt to the point of letting die is inherent to capitalism at a structural level (Laurie and Shaw, 2018; Tyner, 2016, 2019). Left unfettered, capitalism must continuously expand because, virus-like, it kills its host—that is, living labor.…”

Geographies of capital punishment: New directions and interventions

“…Killing and violence are critically important aspects of human life that can help us understand the condition of social–spatial relations and politics across a variety of spaces and scales. Indeed, a burgeoning literature on the geographies of violence, of which killing is a part, demonstrates the discipline's attention to the problems structural and material violence produces and reflects (Davies, 2018; Doel, 2017; Fluri, 2009; Gregory & Pred, 2013; Laurie & Shaw, 2018; Springer, 2011; Springer & Le Billon, 2016; Tyner, 2012, 2016; Tyner & Inwood, 2014; Wright, 2006). This growing body of literature highlights both an avenue for potential development and an underlying absence in the discipline's knowledge production.…”