Politische Gewalt als Möglichkeitserweiterung?

Zwischen Tortenwurf und Terror: Überlegungen zu einer Hauntology politischer Gewalt

Abstract

Are there forms of violence that are likely to expand our possibilities? Usually we associate political violence with terror and repression, i.e. with forms of violence that lead to the restriction of possibilities or to the consolidation of social conditions. In this article, I examine various approaches that promote the use of grassroots based political violence as midwife of expanded possibilities and discuss different shortcomings of these approaches. In the second part of the article I suggest that today, the use of legitimate political violence that seeks to enable new possibilities has more to do with poetry and poiesis than with the use of raw force. I show how this notion of symbolic violence, among others, applies to the example of pieing.