Abstract
The author argues how, within these presentations, one witnesses how the aesthetics of violence both legitimizes such actions relative to the construction of a given enemy, while also evoking a type of invitation to those who may wish to take up a similar point of view or action. The varied phenomenology which emerges from these events situates the viewer and viewed within a process of aesthesis which is simultaneously constructing/constructed. Such a process can be recognized within the context of Jihadi-Salafism violence, represented by al-Qaeda, the Taliban and most recently by ISIS/DAESH/Islamic State, insofar as its aesthetic is directed at those to whom it would like to recruit and those it seeks to dominate or destroy. Perhaps not that unlike a traditional aesthetic formulation of the nature of beauty, this phenomenology seeks to identify the “legitimate” aesthetic grounding of acts of violence relative those who will perform such acts and those who will be its recipient.
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Polizzi, D. (2019). The Aesthetics of Violence. In: Lippens, R., Murray, E. (eds) Representing the Experience of War and Atrocity. Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13925-4_3
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