The Shifting Structures of Violence

Abstract

The present research project proposes to explore the evolving relations between violence and social structures. Social structures have been analyzed exhaustively in terms of core elements like modes of production and forms of consumption. Alternatively, theorists like Foucault have traced the genealogies of institutions in correspondence with the genealogies of power structures. The institutions and discourses thus studied include the prison and sexuality. The hypothesis of the present project is that the genealogy of violence as an institution may be profitably studied, to expose the subtle aspects of social structuration. Violence of the grand scale, like wars and conquests, have been widely studied and recognized as historical markers. These have had a definitive impact on historiography, and continue to be recognized as ruptures that mark and define historical periods. T he focus of the present project however is violence which has been a perennial institution replicating the subtleties of social structuring in performative terms. The evolution of social spaces finds analogical reflection in the evolving technologies of violence.