60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

36 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness
Even though he stresses the diff erence between violence and cruelty,
Norbert Brieskorn also notes that violence signifi es ‘a semantic fi eld
almost devoid of contours’ (2005: 79). Not by accident, Benjamin
(1980) has refrained from off ering any explicit defi nition of the term.
Brieskorn further intimates ideological implications and potential
manipulative consequences precisely on account of this pervasive imprecision:
‘[T]he notion of violence itself constitutes a weapon. Whoever
strives to subsume many forms under it to brand these as violent
ones, will have to keep the notion wide and empty’: ‘The notion of
violence in itself constitutes a weapon.’ (2005: 80)
However, Brieskorn himself contributes considerably towards a better
understanding of this ill-defi ned semantic fi eld when he points
out instructive variation in the semantics of violence across languages.
While in English as well as in French, the relevant words are derived
from the Latin vis, to render ‘violence’, and from the Latin posse
or potestas, to render ‘power’, these two meanings are merged in the
German Gewalt, stemming from walten (dispose, exercise, be able to,
etc.). The semantic fi eld in German therefore lays open more clearly
than is the case with the English and French fi elds the interconnection
that exists between power and violence, actually ‘played down’
by the signifi er potestas (Brieskorn 2005: 80). Thus, ‘authority’ in an
institutional sense (not as a property in a person) is also covered by
Gewalt. Violence, then, besides being opaque and ambiguous in an irritating
and risky way, is also linked up with the issue of the state and
legitimacy. There is legitimate and illegitimate violence, in particular
in the sense of violence sanctioned by the state and violence devoid
of such sanction.
The monopoly of violence as a specifi c order of violence
The modern state is the repository of legitimate violence and actually
is defi ned by the monopoly of such violence. The state exerts violence
both domestically and externally, although in diff erent modalities. In
modern times, Weber states, ‘the entire politics is geared to a realist
reason of state (Staatsräson), to the pragmatics and to the absolute…
aim in itself, the maintenance of the external and domestic distribution
of violence’ (Weber 1985: 361). Thus, the state not only monopolises,
it fundamentally organises violence and rests upon violence.
Domestically, the monopoly of violence means basically that subjects
and citizens have been disarmed – that is, arms-bearing in the sense
of the legitimate exertion of violence is restricted to organs of the
state, in particular the police and the (standing) army. Seemingly,