Violent Attachments

Hagar Kotef

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

Drawing on feminist and queer critiques that see violence as constitutive of identities, this essay points to subject-positions whose construction is necessarily conditioned by exercising violence. Focusing on settler colonialism, I reverse the optics of the first set of critiques: rather than seeing the self as taking form through the injuries she suffers, I try to understand selves that are structurally constituted by causing injury to others. This analysis refuses the assumption that violence is in conflict with (liberal) identity, and that, therefore, the endurance of violence of liberal states/societies is dependent upon mechanisms of active blindness (or denial, deferral, and other forms of dissociation). I argue that this assumption, which is shared by many critiques of violence, fails to perceive that people can desire the violent arrangements supporting their communities. They therefore fail to address political settings wherein violence is an affirmative element of political identities.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)4-29
Number of pages26
JournalPolitical Theory
Volume48
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Feb 2020
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2019.

Funding

I would like to thank Lawrie Balfour for her continuous support with this essay; the two anonymous readers, who provided insightful and most productive critique; and Murad Idris, who in different ways accompanied this essay for some time. It was written with the generous support of a fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, for which I am grateful. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding is from the Leverhulme Trust.

FundersFunder number
Murad Idris
Leverhulme Trust

    Keywords

    • Israel/Palestine
    • denial
    • settler colonialism
    • subject formation
    • violence
    • visibility

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