Session 7: Manifestations of Violence and Identity

Session 7: Manifestations of Violence and Identity
Chair: Fiore Geelhoed
Social Malaise, Suicide and Images of Violence
Anthony King
School of Sociology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Australia has one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world. Epidemiological data indicate that young men (15-25 years of age) make up one of the most vulnerable groups (while men of all ages are far more likely to suicide than women). At the same time, in the popular print media these young men are regularly portrayed as violent in various ways (on the sporting field, at war, in their cups, contests and leisure which take on many different forms). I do not think that this is coincidental. I have collected many of these images over the years and have used them to create a number of photomontages, the purpose of which is to evoke Durkheim’s notion of suicidogenic currents that flow – indeed, often surge – through the landscape of our collective consciousness, finding their clearest expression in the suicide rate. The notion of ‘current’ metaphorically expresses the way in which violence weaves its way through social life and influences social relations. I have planned my conference presentation as a slide-show of a select number of photomontages, to be accompanied by a commentary. In the time allowed for the presentation, I plan to show 10 photomontages. Of necessity, the commentary will have to be brief. In each instance, I will point to aspects of violence evoked in the image, in order to underscore the main contention of this presentation, ie that one of the ‘risk groups’ for suicide, ie younger and older men, is habitually portrayed – and taken for granted – as being violent, in socially both acceptable and unacceptable ways. The violence that is manifest in those images can be thought of as a ‘suicidogenic force’ – a powerful social trend that runs not only through social activity, but also through hearts and minds of contemporary persons; as such, it constitutes one of the suicide-inducing conditions in contemporary society. This argument does not follow Durkheim’s argument regarding the ’causes’ of suicide in its entirety; it merely uses his idea of ‘suicidogenic force’ as a sensitising concept that aids my analysis of the link between suicide and violence. I shall clarify my basic position in those terms in my introduction to the ‘slide-show’ of images.

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The research field is interdisciplinary and involves philosophical, psychological and sociological problems. My aim is to define stigma and disdain as self-defense mechanisms used by both individuals and communities. Discussing the relationship between them and emphasising the way they act in a process of identity formation will contribute to an understanding of the question what contempt is and why we actually disdain others. I will focus on the problem of exclusion in a very broad sense. Specifically I seek to interpret it within the background of philosophical ideas including dialogue philosophy (Tischner, Buber, and Levinas), Witwicki’s kratos theory, resentment, dignity and subject problems.
The notion of ‘disdain’ will be used not only in the meaning of emotion, but also as an interactional and interrelational phenomenon between individuals (or communities). Demonstrating how negative ways of constructing identity functions I would like to present several examples of stigmatisation. For this reason the analysis of Anti-Semitism will be used as an example of how stigma and disdain functions. Finally, I seek to answer the question of the moral consequences of stigma and disdain and the possibilities to extinguish them.

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