Date of Award

5-2024

Degree Type

Honors College Thesis

Academic Program

Philosophy BA

Department

Philosophy and Religion

First Advisor

Ery Shin, Ph.D.

Advisor Department

English

Abstract

Violence has received a great deal of study in many disciplines—as an act of force, or as a theoretical concept. Slovenian political philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek provides in his work Violence: Six Sideways Reflections a unique typology of violence, building and expanding upon decades of existing research in many areas. In so doing, Žižek establishes uniquely insightful links between different forms of violence that open the opportunity to examine outbursts of violence, be they riots, rebellion, or war, in a new way. Cognizant of the inability for us to simultaneously analyze both the person-to-person violence seen in acts like crime or riots and the systemic violence of phenomena like institutional discrimination or cultural stereotyping, Žižek casts six sideways glances, reflections of which can be seen in my case study of the events of the Summer of 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the wake of George Floyd’s death. I contend that media responses to that tumultuous Summer are not merely incomplete, but miss a very fundamental relationship between the violent acts of individuals and the violence inherent in our symbolic order—in our government, in our culture, and even in our very language—that Žižek’s typology helps illuminate; in missing this relationship inherent to the matrix of violence, common responses also miss its potential solution: divine, emancipatory violence, erupting suddenly and aggressively like a Biblical swarm of locusts to tear down injustice at its very foundations.

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