The Philosopher

Violence is not some abstract concept or mere theoretical problem. Ever timely and yet equally timeless, it represents a violation in the very conditions that constitute what it means to be human. Violence is always an attack upon a person’s dignity, their sense of selfhood, and their future. It is nothing less than the desecration of one’s position in the world. It is a denial and outright assault on the very qualities that we claim make us considered members of this social fellowship and shared union called “civilization.” Yet we also know violence demands deeper thinking, especially when considering its most extreme manifestations. This special issue attends to the extremities of violence, which take us to the violence of disappearance and oblivion, while also returning to a previous collaboration that sought to rethink some of the most important canonical writings on the subject. Contributions by Elise Feron, Valérie Rosoux, Terrell Carver, Lina Malagon and Ana Cristina Portillo, Roddy Brett, Richard English, Phil Scraton, Daniele Rugo, and Chantal Meza. As a Mexican artist whose work has intimately dealt with the issues of disappearance and violence, Chantal’s work is also featured throughout the edition. Also, edited transcripts of conversations with Henry A. Giroux, Samantha Rose Hill, Lewis R. Gordon, and James Martel all feature here. These explore the texts that have shaped and challenged our understanding of violence, including Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, and Walter Benjamin’s Critique of Violence. Elsewhere, Heather King looks at the process of metaphorizing animals; Robert Wyllie and Steven Knepper give us an engaging overview of the work of Byung-Chul Han; Alexandre Lefebvre and Nils F. Schott discuss their edited collection of Henri Bergson’s lectures on freedom; and John Lysaker asks what a philosopher is to do with the idea of friendship. Isabelle Laurenzi reviews books by Manon Garcia and Sara Ahmed; Caleb Ward reviews Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ new biography of Audre Lorde; and Adam Ferner explores the philosophy of parenting in his review of a new book by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman.