Introduction

In: Critical times: interventions in global critical theory, Volume 4, Issue 1, p. 91-92

Abstract

Abstract
Violence manifests as a force that dissects: it disjoins, divides, breaks up lives and bodies, communities, the environment. It also constitutes a field of forces that theory, in its critical registers, is trying to dissect, to anatomize, to take apart, to lay open, to open up for critique and transformation, especially when violence takes hidden, invisibilized, or structural forms. As Étienne Balibar's work exemplifies, for theory to do this, it not only needs to take account of the resistance and struggles of its age; it also needs to move beyond clichés about violence as the intentional infliction of bodily harm, and beyond the widespread assumption that violence is the absolute other of politics, that politics and violence are incompatible. The commentaries in this special section further explore the theoretical space opened up by Balibar's work in light of the current conjuncture.