Self-Inflicted Wound: On the Paradoxical Dimensions of American Violence

Abstract

America’s international and domestic paradigms of violence show how monopolies of violence can contradict one another by creating conditions that allow violence to flourish rather than stemming its reproduction. This chapter explores America’s international and domestic paradigms of violence within the context of Elias’s work on civilizing processes, the development of human aggression, monopolies of violence, and social integration and disintegration. This chapter builds upon Elias’s ideas of monopolies of violence and what constitutes civilizing and decivilizing trends within the larger scope of socio-historical developmental processes. The central argument of this chapter is that the historical trajectories of American violence abroad are irrevocably connected with the practice and conjugation of violence occurring within its own borders. The broad and sweeping task of uncovering the complexities of various historical modes and trajectories of American violence is outside the purview of this chapter, which rather concentrates on several key cultural components of American society that have assisted in its historical progressions of violence. These cultural components include America’s deeply held belief of “standing one’s ground”, free-market competition, hyper-masculinity, rugged individualism and an exceptional self-image. The first two sections of this chapter will discuss the international and domestic paradigms of American violence as they relate to the theoretical developments of Norbert Elias and the works of other Eliasian scholars. The final section will explore the paradoxical violence these two paradigms have created, where I draw out the decivilizing trends implicit in both. The significance of this work lies in its critical reflexivity of American violence, including how social, technical and psychological developments have shaped the strategic use of violence in American society, an intellectual endeavour that must adhere to the sociological developments of one of the most under-appreciated thinkers of the twentieth century.