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S. Jackson
Symbolic Violence: Religious and Secular Order-Making
Table of Contents
Symbolic Violence: Religious and Secular Order-Making...................................................................... 3 The Significance of Symbol .....................................................................................................................................................5 Symbolic Violence .......................................................................................................................................................................8 Dealing with terms ..........................................................................................................................................................8 Divergent understandings of symbolic violence ................................................................................................8 Symbolic violence and symbolic victims............................................................................................................. 10 Dualism in symbolic violence .................................................................................................................................. 11 Bourdieu’s symbolic violence .................................................................................................................................. 15 Symbolic violence is an orientation ...................................................................................................................... 17 Mythological violence: the importance of narrative...................................................................................... 18
The Secularisation of Order-Making ............................................................................................................................... 19 Secular symbolic systems.......................................................................................................................................... 19 Myth and ritual accompanying secular symbolic systems.......................................................................... 21 Secular symbolic violence ......................................................................................................................................... 23
Examples of Symbolic Violence .......................................................................................................................................... 24 Sacrifice: scapegoating and self-‐sacrifice ........................................................................................................... 24 Terrorism ......................................................................................................................................................................... 30 Genocide and ethnic cleansing ................................................................................................................................ 34
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................................................... 35 Bibliography........................................................................................................................................................38
Word Count: 13,333
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Abstract
Symbolic violence is an indirect violence that operates via a proxy victim. The
following argument attempts to understand the symbolic nature of these proxy
victims as representatives of a removed target, as intermediaries who can be
harmed on behalf of the target that the aggressor cannot harm directly. This
violence is fundamentally related to understandings of reality; it attempts to make
order out of perceived chaos or remake order when the current order is deemed
unacceptable. While originally found in religious systems, secular ideologies have
arguably used this mechanism more prominently than groups that are best
understood as religious in contemporary times. Myth and ritual are central to
symbolic violence, which relies on stories and particular forms of action to ensure
that the proxy mechanism is understood by those who witness the violence.
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Symbolic Violence: Religious and Secular Order-‐Making
Sacred violence, cosmic war, religious violence, mythological violence. These are a
few of the terms used to describe a certain form of violence common to religious traditions
that attempts to make sense of the way things are – in other words, order-‐making violence.
Even traditions often considered peaceful involve some dimension of violence, be it the
inner jihad of Sufism or the struggle against anatman (the illusion of self) of bodhisattvas.
This sort of violence, which necessarily involves the use of symbolism, is not confined to
religious traditions, though. In the modern era, secular struggles (for example, the West
against communism or the global community against terrorism) adopt the same sort of
mentality, depicting a conflict between the forces of good and the forces of evil. I label this
phenomenon ‘symbolic violence’ due to its reliance on victims who are symbols of a larger
intended target. Building from Paul Tillich’s notion of the symbol, this type of violence is
understood to refer to a deeper reality than the immediate experience of battle.
Symbolic violence is an indirect form of violence (in that it does not focus on
immediate results), one that is ‘subjective’ (in Slavoj Zizek’s words) and relies on its
participants to share a common understanding of the way that the world operates. Like all
uses of symbol, symbolic violence alludes to reveal a deeper level of reality. As Mark
Juergensmeyer notes, cosmic violence is ‘larger than life… Notions of cosmic war are
intimately personal but can also be translated to the social plane. Ultimately, though, they
transcend human experience.’1 To transcend and yet remain relevant to the lives of its
soldiers, this violence must originate in systems of orientation towards the world – in other
words, symbolic violence must be located within a cultural context.
The contextual dependency of this violence reveals one of several complexities.
When there is a battle between good and evil, good is a subjective position; depending on
the perspective of the observer, either side in such a battle could play either role. This is
what allowed George W. Bush to declare a crusade against Islamic terrorists, who had just
1 Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, 149–150.
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declared a similar intention of cosmic war against the demonic enemy of the West.2 Such
dependency on perspective is inherent to the nature of symbols; they exist in relationship
with the individual perceiving them and the context in which that individual lives.
The essential characteristic of symbolic violence is its use of a proxy victim: that is,
the violence is intended to harm a target that cannot be directly affected; instead, the
aggressor uses a more easily harmed victim as a representative of the elusive target. This is
seen in the characterisation in Christian Patriot3 ideology of government officials as agents
of the devil; the immediate reality of the identity of their potential victims (that is, the
personal, individual identity) is only recognised in deference to the perception that derives
from the Christian Patriot understanding of reality. In cases like this one, the victim
becomes a symbol of the intended target, losing its individuality. This is the relevance of the
term ‘symbolic violence.'
Following Tillich’s discussion of symbols, it is apparent that the archetypal form of
symbolic violence is religious: the ultimate reality towards upon the symbolism present in
such violence relies is often the divine. However, it is also apparent that there are secular
parallels to this sort of violence, which concern the (perhaps less) ultimate realities of
governance, justice, or economics, to name just a few. Without undergoing a process of
secularisation itself, the dependence of symbolic violence on transcendent symbols reveals
that such violence mirrors the secularisation of public life and accompanying means of
ordering reality in many parts of the world: as dominant symbolic systems transferred
from religious to secular orientations, the violence that accompanied such systems moved
with them.
The following argument begins with a discussion of symbols, especially with
reference to their development in Paul Tillich’s theology. Then, the concepts learned from
this general discussion of symbols are applied to the notion of symbolic violence, revealing
the necessary characteristics including the proxy victim, the intended target, and a
particular understanding of the world. This discusses requires recognition of the tendency
2 Bush, “President: Today We Mourned, Tomorrow We Work”; Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, 148. 3 For an authoritative discussion of Christian Patriots, see Aho, The Politics of Righteousness. In brief, the term “Christian Patriot” refers to extreme right-‐wing political activists in the US who base their political ideology on their understanding of Christianity.
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towards dualism of those who participate in symbolic violence, as well as the prominence
of contextual concerns and narrative in complete understandings of the phenomenon. The
third section briefly discusses the process in which symbolic violence follows systems of
order-‐making from the religious sphere into the secular world. Next, a few examples of
symbolic violence are presented in an attempt to make the prior abstractions more easily
understood. Finally, the conclusion reminds the reader of the key characteristics of
symbolic violence and of the complexity of any understanding of symbolic violence.
The Significance of Symbol
Nuanced understandings of religious systems rely on different types of
intermediaries for complex notions, for indefinable qualities, and for unspoken
assumptions. These intermediaries often take the form of symbols. Appropriately, much of
Tillich’s theology depends on his understanding of the symbol. Symbols represent things
that exist in a different level of understanding. They are small-‐scale representations of
larger-‐scale ideas, objects, or beings. They can easily be confused with signs (sometimes
called ‘signals’), which also represent things but in a more direct way, or in the words of
Ernst Cassirer, ‘in a fixed and unique way.’4 Instead, symbols are ‘results of a creative
encounter with reality. They are born out of such an encounter; they die if this encounter
ceases.’5 In other words, symbols are contingent upon the context of the person perceiving
the symbol. They are utilised when someone recognises a connection between the
prospective symbol and the thing to be symbolised based on pre-‐existing similarities.
Symbols are not ‘born’ randomly or unintentionally, as if drawn out of a hat; neither are
they explicitly and consciously created. They arise when one recognises the symbolic
nature of one thing when considered in light of another.
Whereas a sign can be universal and does not point to greater reality (a common
example is the red colour of a three-‐coloured traffic signal that indicates that one is to
stop), a symbol depends on one’s understanding: thus, the colour red can symbolise anger,
danger, excitement, and passion in various cultural contexts.6 The use of red in a traffic
4 Cassirer, An Essay on Man, 36. 5 Tillich, “Theology and Symbolism,” 109. 6 McCandless and AlwaysWithHonor.com, “Colours in Culture.”
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signal is different than the use of red in an image of a demon, whose red eyes or red skin
indicate the danger posed by the demonic figure; one is a matter of convention, while the
other attempts to point to a deeper reality of the figure (namely, an aspect of the demon’s
character). The sign expects knowledge of what is implied, while the symbol expects a
shared system of meaning to convey what is implied. The sign is shorthand for the familiar,
while the symbol portrays the unspeakable.
It is important to note that symbols do not have a reality of their own but are
predicated upon relationship. Cassirer argues that any ‘symbol has no actual existence as a
part of the physical world; it has a “meaning.” ’7 One particular symbol can play multiple
roles: its use depends upon both its user and its observer. Its meaning comes from the way
it is intended and the way it is perceived. Nothing of relevance to the symbol is inherent to
it but arises out of the relationship between itself, its referent, and its audience. As with
anything that is ‘born,’ a symbol depends on its ‘parents’ – that is, the context out of which
it arises, especially those who understand the symbolic message of the symbol.
Symbols are typically used in special circumstances, where there is some hidden or
difficult-‐to-‐access truth that an individual is trying to convey. Because the nature of God is
ineffable, religious traditions develop divine symbols, which attempt to describe divine
characteristics that cannot be described in a direct manner. It is in this sense that Tillich
can say that a symbol ‘opens up a level of meaning which otherwise is closed. It opens up a
stratum of reality, of meaning and being which otherwise we could not reach; and in doing
so, it participates in that which it opens.’8 The otherwise unapproachable is reached
indirectly (and indefinitely). To say ‘the Lord is my shepherd’ is to describe something that
cannot be described straightforwardly; there is some notion of the Lord as protector, as
connected to His ‘sheep’, present in their lives, caring for their needs, etc. But all of these
descriptions do not add up to the truth captured by the statement, ‘the Lord is my
shepherd.’9 The symbol is more than the sum of its description.
Religious symbols refer to an ‘ultimate concern’: that is, the thing around which
one’s worldview is constructed. Symbols can also refer to intermediate concerns, which in
7 Cassirer, An Essay on Man, 57. 8 Tillich, “Theology and Symbolism,” 109. 9 This example is developed from Tillich, “The Meaning and Justification of Religious Symbols,” 9.
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turn reflect the ultimate concern. Tillich distinguishes between symbols that refer to the
true ultimate concern (namely, ‘being itself’ or God) and those that refer to other ultimate
concerns. He suggests that all symbols that do not point to God are forms of idolatry. While
idolatry is not significant to the notion of symbolic violence, it is necessary to understand
that intermediate concerns are often mistaken for ultimate concerns; this in turn
demonstrates that a concern’s ‘ultimateness’ is not a readily accessible truth, but instead
depends on the perspective of the person perceiving the concern.
In addition to describing something that cannot be directly described, symbols can
be used to refer to other symbols. William Rowe formalises this notion in speaking of
religious symbols: ‘One could say that first-‐order religious symbols point to being-‐itself,
second-‐order religious symbols point to first-‐order ones, n-‐order religious symbols point to
n-‐1 order religious symbols.’10 It could be said that symbols have varying degrees of
‘ultimateness’ corresponding to the degree of ultimacy of that to which they point: a
symbol of God is more ultimate than a symbol of the Church or of the nation or of athletic
competition; similarly, a symbol of a symbol of God (n order) is less ultimate than a symbol
of God (n-1 order). In the case of Christian Patriots, multiple levels of symbolism are
involved in their understandings of the perceived conflict against the US government. The
ultimate target is the devil; the US government, as the physical embodiment of the agents of
the devil, symbolises the devil; government officials (actual human beings) symbolise the
intangible collective that is the US government; and the government officials with whom
they interact symbolise all government officials.
To sum up: a symbol is a representative of a hidden truth. It is a means of indirectly
approaching something that cannot be approached more directly. It exists in relationship
between the truth it attempts to describe and its audience, and thus participates in the
reality of both (although its participation in the thing described is more apparent to the
audience, which does not readily recognise its own involvement with the symbol). The
thing to which a symbol points is, in Tillich’s words, a ‘concern’; religious symbols point to
the ‘ultimate concern,’ which is the orienting fact of reality; an increasingly secular world
10 Rowe, Religious Symbols and God: A Philosophical Study of Tillich’s Theology, 131.
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employs non-‐religious symbols for the same purpose. Symbols are a means of orienting
oneself towards a somehow unapproachable understanding of the way things are, and of
how one is involved in the order of things. They are order-‐making devices.
Symbolic Violence
Dealing with terms
Any discussion of religion and violence must attempt to define the terms, however
incomplete the definitions may be. For the purposes of this discussion, ‘religion’ refers to
any system that attempts to make sense of the world with reference to the transcendent
that includes the historical past, present, and future as a small part of the overall picture.
This vague definition allows for a variety of traditions, whether they make reference to a
divine being or not. ‘Violence’ is understood as non-‐cooperative conflict that intends or
causes harm, and has the ultimate goal of establishing (or reaffirming) the authority of the
individual, group, or system performing, authorising, or otherwise causing the violence. As
such, religious violence is any sort of violence that attempts to establish the authority of a
particular way of understanding the world with reference to some sort of transcendence.
All human interaction with any sort of transcendence requires the use of symbols. Thus, all
violence that relies upon transcendent authority is to some degree symbolic; if the
symbolism is derived from proxy victims, it is described by the term ‘symbolic violence.’
Divergent understandings of symbolic violence
Symbolic violence has been used elsewhere to indicate indirect forms of violence
that are often overlooked by individuals who are searching for violence.11 Zizek uses it in
reference to violence imbedded in speech and imagery.12 Bourdieu’s symbolic violence is a
systemic sort of violence, where participation in the system ensures that a victim’s
victimisation continues; it operates on the basis of ‘symbolic capital,’ which is held by the
11 Those discussed in this section have been chosen not for any particular perceived conflict with the argument of this paper, but because of the familiarity of the author with the use of the term ‘symbolic violence.’ The theories mentioned have been chosen based on their prominence, rather than their relevance. 12 Zizek, Violence, 1.
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representatives of power in a given group.13 Such understandings use cultural norms to
reinforce an established system that provides meaning to power structures and imagery. In
other words, this sort of violence uses existing conceptions of the proper order of things to
support those conceptions: maligned groups remain under the authority of the privileged
groups; professions are ranked according to ‘honour’ and economic benefit; genders are
described as inferior and superior; constructed groups based on ethnicity, ‘race,’ culture, or
language are separated and given different degrees of preferential treatment. Such systems,
whether of power or of rhetoric, are culturally dependent; they are not universally
comprehensible, but require some level of familiarity with the system as a whole.
These understandings of symbolic violence are not incompatible with the model
described here; they are approaches from a different starting point and are not as
comprehensive. A more thorough consideration requires going back to the symbol itself.
Utilising Tillich’s notion of a symbol as something that represents a deeper level of reality
(and which relies on a culturally contingent relationship between the individual and the
thing that operates as a symbol), symbolic violence can be understood as a violence that
operates on one level of reality and points to (or reveals) another. As with all uses of
symbolism, such violence intends to support a hidden truth. All symbols intend to make
order out of chaos,14 and the readily apparent effects of violence make its use as a symbolic
tool enticing.
With this in mind, one can see that Bourdieu’s violence, which relies on existing
cultural norms to perpetuate the order of things, is one perspective on symbolic violence;
rather than differing substantially from the model outlined here, it emphasises the
structure supporting the symbolism rather than the symbolism itself.
In Bourdieu’s model, the person with elevated status utilises that status to ensure
the continuity of the status: the priest uses the notion that a clergy member has more
insight into religious reality to ensure that the priestly status remains elevated, often by
invoking a spiritual battle between the forces of good and evil. In such a situation, the priest
13 See especially Bourdieu and Thompson, Language and Symbolic Power, chap. “On Symbolic Power” Zizek’s symbolic violence, rhetorical in nature, is closely related to Bourdieu’s symbolic violence, which takes many forms. 14 Even if only the chaos of the unknown or the partially known.
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commits what Bourdieu calls symbolic violence against the laity by using the current
hierarchy of roles to ensure that they do not reach the level of the clergy. The division
between clergy and laity is an attempt to describe the order of reality: there is a spiritual
power structure that is true and incontrovertible, and is somehow related to one’s
relationship with (or simply knowledge of) God. As with the model presented in this paper,
Bourdieu’s understanding is contextually dependent; however, it assumes a much more
general and pervasive notion of violence, often less intentional than the sort of violence
that is the focus of the following discussion. Additionally, Bourdieu’s symbolic violence
focuses on the actor, whereas the model presented in this paper focuses on the proxy
victim and intended target.
Some understandings of the ‘symbolic’ seem to imply that it is synonymous with
‘figurative.’ John Hall, in his article that provides a comprehensive overview of religion and
violence, suggests that there is a distinction between symbolic violence and physical
violence: ‘even purely symbolic violence may legitimate physical violence.’15 ‘Symbolic’ is
not, however, a synonym for ‘figurative.’ In fact, symbolic violence often relies on physical
action to bring the symbolism to life. Zizek makes the same mistake when he equates
symbolic violence with rhetoric or imagery: rhetorical violence is only one aspect of the
symbolic violence that operates on multiple levels of reality via multiple modes of action.
Symbolic violence and symbolic victims
The defining characteristic of symbolic violence is the use of symbolic victims. Such
a victim becomes a proxy for an intended target that cannot easily be harmed. As Tillich
described, all symbols point to a deeper level of reality; symbolic victims represent a player
or a force operating within a deeper level of reality: specifically, an individual or small
group stands in for a larger group or force. For example, symbolic victims in militant
Protestant systems are the human form of demonic powers or of evil (or sin) itself; and the
conflict between the militant Protestant and the symbol of evil is symbolic of the greater
conflict between good and evil, light and darkness. 15 Hall, “Religion and Violence: Social Processes in Comparative Perspective,” 362. Elsewhere, Hall seems to indicate that symbolic violence and physical violence may overlap. As with many other scholars, the use of the term is never made clear.
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Symbolic victims are chosen in part for their vulnerability. As the intended target of
violence is deemed safe from direct violence, a proxy is selected that can be said to
represent the intended target and is susceptible to attack. The represented target may be
safe because the risks to the aggressor are considered too great, or because the target is too
far removed to be reached with direct attacks. Either way, the proxy victim is equated with
the intended target in such a way that any harm done to the proxy is understood as
affecting the target from the perspective of the aggressor (although the effect for the target
is not the same as the sum of the effects for the proxy).
One of the complexities of symbolic violence is implied in this last sentence:
perspective affects the understanding of violence. In this way, groups targeted by symbolic
violence might not recognise that they are the intended targets. More than merely changing
the terms assigned to the sides of the conflict, such a disconnect radically changes the way
that the violence contributes to the lives of those affected. Often this takes the form of the
wider public not recognising the symbolic dimension of a conflict with a counter-‐
hegemonic group. One example is the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA),
a sectarian group related to the Christian Identity movement in the US, met its demise in a
conflict with US federal agents in 1985. The group considered itself to be a Christian group
opposing the existence of a satanic federal government, against whom it would wage a holy
war; the federal government merely recognised it as a criminal group accused of theft,
possession of illegal weapons, and kidnapping, whose threat could not continue
unchallenged.16 For the federal agents, the conflict was not symbolic but related to issues of
law enforcement, targeting a specific criminal. Rather than being understood as a symbolic
conflict (wherein one side of a duality harms its opposition) for those not initiated into the
perspective of the group assigning symbolic significance, the conflict is merely one between
a majority and a minority.
Dualism in symbolic violence
To a great extent, the efficacy of symbolic violence relies upon a perceived dualism.
A proxy victim is chosen based on identification with the other side of a conflict. For
example, a militant millenarian chooses a symbolic victim based on the perception of a
16 Stern, Terror in the Name of God, chap. 1.
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grand conflict pitting the forces of good (us) against the forces of evil (them, especially ‘our’
immediate enemy). The proxy is necessarily an absolute Other, one who embodies the
qualities against which a group defines itself.
One prominent mode of symbolic violence is the scapegoat mechanism, as described
by René Girard.17 One of the initial criteria for a group searching for a scapegoat is the
outsider status of any potential victim. The scapegoat is inevitably a peripheral member of
the society in question or a known foreigner, familiar enough to be identified with the
perceived negative which the society is attempting to correct via the persecution of a
scapegoat, but different enough that there is no fear of repercussions for the persecution to
which the scapegoat will be subjected. In addition, the Otherness of the scapegoat ensures
that its removal will also entail the complete removal of the designated evil from the
society. In describing this very specific form of symbolic violence, Girard suggests that the
act ‘serves to protect the entire community from its own violence’; thus, the community
must ‘choose victims outside itself’ to maintain its own status.18 Such a process of Othering
removes the possibility of identifying with the victim; while minor similarities might be
recognised, the Other is essentially not like us. No matter how familiar or even involved in
the community the scapegoat may have originally been, the process of scapegoating
requires that this person be understood as completely distinct from those who occupy
normal status in the community; the scapegoat is not perceived as an intermediary
between the community and the outside (with identity that is neither ‘us’ nor ‘them’) even
if this is inherent in the role played by such a proxy victim. The perception denies this
reality, insisting upon a dualism that is not there.
In his excellent comparative investigation of religious violence across a variety of
traditions, James Aho describes two primary types of religious conflict: ‘immanentist-‐
cosmological war’ (individual, never-‐ending conflict) that is as much an internal struggle
between order and chaos which disrupts individual and communal lives as it is a physical
battle with an opposing force; and ‘transcendent-‐historical war’ (overarching, group
conflict that can be definitively won) that pits the agents of good (‘us’) against the against of 17 Girard, The Scapegoat. 18 Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 8.
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evil (‘them’).19 Both of these forms are symbolic in that each relies on a representation of
that which is to be avoided by everyone (chaos in the form of rejection of proper behaviour
in the case of the first, evil in the form of those who reject God’s rule in the case of the
second); however, the selection of a symbolic victim only occurs where the victim is an
enemy chosen ‘out there.’ The internal enemy of the immanentist-‐cosmological war, found
most prevalently in mystic traditions that focus on internal purity more than external
homogeneity, involves recognising the Other within oneself. Here, the dualism is internal
and indefinite, and the struggle is to balance that dualism with the triumph of the internal
good (for example, Jewish children are taught to listen to the yetzer tov, the good
inclination, and subdue the yetzer hara, the evil inclination;20 contemporary symbolism
depicts an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other when an individual is faced
with a difficult decision).
Aho’s description of ‘transcendent-‐historical war’ is perhaps more familiar to the
contemporary audience. Such violence pits absolute good against absolute evil, where each
is embodied in a distinct person or group. There is no significant internal conflict in this
form of religious war; instead, the soldiers of God fight against the soldiers of the Enemy.
This type of holy war ‘is a sign of God’s wrath, symbolically re-‐establishing God’s justice in
history while preserving a sense of the orderliness of human existence despite its
suffering.’21 ‘Thus mythologically, the holy war will be fought between the absolutely
righteous and the equally absolute incarnation of Evil.’22 Such a distinction relies on a
recognition of an external figure who is absolutely Other. This is the prominent,
mainstream form of religious violence in Western traditions. Aho uses war in ‘Hebraism’
(Biblical or Temple Judaism), Islamic jihad that occurs in the dar al-harb (‘house of war,’
which refers to land not controlled by Muslims; this is opposed to the internal jihad of
Sufism, which falls into the immanentist-‐cosmological category), and modern Protestant
violence as his case studies for this category of violence.
19 Aho, Religious Mythology and the Art of War. 20 Rossel, Chanover, and Stern, When a Jew Seeks Wisdom, 56. 21 Aho, Religious Mythology and the Art of War, 148. 22 Ibid., 151.
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In both of these categories, dualism is present to some extent. The immanentist-‐
cosmological war relies upon recognition of the presence of evil within each person; this
sort of internal dualism leads to strict jus in bello restrictions. Aho describes the ritual
aspect of such conflicts, to the extent that casualties were extremely limited: ‘Roswell
Britton in his study of a twenty-‐year period in the Spring and Autumn Annals shows that in
the more than forty battles fought there were but two reported casualties.’23 Even the
outcome of the battle was not as important as the way in which the battle was fought; only
through proper action could true victory be achieved. The dualism of the transcendent-‐
historical war is more immediately recognisable: the external Other is so distinct – in fact,
so evil – that any and all conduct is appropriate if it leads to victory in battle: ‘in those
symbolisms of holy war – Hebraism, Islam, and Reformation Protestantism – in which the
antagonist is ritually associated with the harbie [the outsider], with what is absolutely alien
to the protagonist, battle is liberated from all constraints, and violence tends to become
totalitarian.’24
This distinction – conflict between imperfect combatants and between one
absolutely good side and one absolutely evil side – contains the logic for the different
positions on ethical conduct in war. In a short response to Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the
Political, George Schwab presents the same dualism depicted in Aho’s distinction between
the modes of religious violence and explains its effect on just war principles. In Schwab’s
terminology, the difference is one of ‘enemy or foe.’ ‘The distinction can be best understood
by ascertaining whether certain accepted rules governing warfare are followed by
combatants.’25 Applying this terminology to Aho’s model, the immanentist-‐cosmological
war is fought against the enemy: as both sides are imperfect forces looking to settle a
disagreement, there is no attempt to destroy an Other depicted as evil. The transcendent-‐
historical war is fought against the foe: on top of any immediate concerns over which the
war is being fought, it is ultimately a means to eliminating the despised Other. Schwab
argues that this distinction is muddled in modern English, where foe and enemy have lost
their particular meanings related to the relative Otherness of the opposition; but the
23 Ibid., 106. 24 Ibid., 224. 25 Schwab, “Enemy or Foe,” 195.
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practical difference remains. In describing the trajectory of views of the enemy combatant,
he outlines the ‘three distinct positions’ of Christianity with regards to warfare that
occurred through the end of the Middle Ages: first was a pacifism that considered any sort
of killing as ‘incompatible with the Christian ideal of love’; next was the stage epitomized by
the Augustine’s just war formulations, where war could be fought given the proper
circumstances; the final stage, most prevalent during the Crusades, divided the world into
Christian and sub-‐Christian, where fighting against the non-‐Christians knew no
limitations.26
Schwab reveals that Othering is not universal in warfare; combat against a
neighbour (in the Christian parlance, an enemy in Schwab’s terminology) is not against an
Other but rather against someone fundamentally similar with whom one had a
disagreement. On the other hand, warfare against a true Other (a foe) is a type of combat
that portrays all enemy combatants as symbols of the inferiority of the Other. The
dimension of Otherness within the enemy determines the code of proper conduct in battle.
True symbolic violence demands this Otherness of its victims, as it requires a neat division
of those relevant to combat into ‘us’ and ‘them.’ The dualism builds from the symbolic
structure of those going to battle, while at the same time ensuring its continuity.
Bourdieu’s symbolic violence
At this stage, it is worth returning to Bourdieu’s understanding of symbolic violence.
As indicated previously, Bourdieu focuses on the system surrounding the construction of
symbols rather than on the symbols themselves. Violence is about the exercise of power,
and symbolic power is ‘a power of constructing reality.’27 It is that which provides the
ability to direct the structures that provide an understanding of the way that things are.
Symbolic power allowed Senator Joe McCarthy to wage an internal war against
Communism in the US during the 1950s, and allowed Khalid, a young man in the film
Rendition,28 to be persuaded to strap a bomb to his chest and attempt to kill a government
official.
26 Ibid., 196–197. 27 Bourdieu and Thompson, Language and Symbolic Power, 166. 28 Hood, Rendition.
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Symbolic systems are primarily a means of understanding the order of things: one’s
place in the world, the hierarchy of authority, even the way the stars move in the sky. There
are competing systems, just as there is competition within a given system. Symbolic capital
is the resource that one uses to establish one’s place within a system; ultimately, it is also
the resource that establishes (or perpetuates) the system. In the system synonymous with
the Catholic Church, a priest holds more symbolic capital than a faithful member of the
laity, and thus holds a higher position on the power hierarchy than the layperson. Bourdieu
suggests that these systems rely on the participation of all members of a system; he
famously remarks that symbolic power relies on misrecognition of power.29 A person with
symbolic power gains that power when enough people (mis)recognise the given-‐ness of
that person’s power. Bourdieu indicates this method of ordering when he says that
‘symbols are the instruments par excellence of “social integration”.’30 Social integration is
another way of saying that a person participates in the system of ordering.
While this may seem to contradict Tillich’s insistence that a symbol is not created,
such a contradiction assumes a level of intentionality in Bourdieu’s systems that simply
does not exist. The person with symbolic power does not necessarily seek symbolic power,
but power in general; he (most often, as Bourdieu indicates that gender domination is ‘the
paradigmatic form of symbolic violence’31) does not recognise the extent of the system in
which he participates, or if he does, cannot control his use of symbolic power with the
intentionality that he might desire. Tillich’s organic development of the symbol relies on
this system of symbolic power, which in turn relies on the subconscious participation of the
group: the symbol at the top of the pyramid relies on a foundation formed by the
participation of the group’s membership. As Tillich notes, the symbol ‘is created in the
community of believers and cannot be fully understood outside this community.’32 The
degree to which a symbol is dependent upon context for its meaning is the degree to which
it is dependent on the system in which it resides for its efficacy.
29 Bourdieu and Thompson, Language and Symbolic Power, 113. 30 Ibid., 166. 31 Bourdieu and Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 170. 32 Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, 24.
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Symbolic violence is an orientation
Consideration of examples of symbolic violence reveals what seems like a
methodological or definitional problem: phenomena that clearly are not primarily symbolic
in nature seem to contain some of the criteria of symbolic violence. The most prevalent
example of this is that of capital punishment: it seems that the symbolism of putting to
death the crime by making the convicted a proxy for all those who commit that crime is not
the primary reasoning behind execution. Proponents argue for just punishment for
individual crime and the inability to rehabilitate the individual. Yet it also seems clear that
deterrence is a way of looking at capital punishment; among other things, state execution
discourages future crimes of the nature that lead to the death penalty.
This leads to an alternative way of thinking about the nature of symbolic violence: it
is not a category like direct interpersonal violence or systemic violence, but is a way of
interpreting acts of violence. Rather than looking at the way that violence is carried out (for
example, individual action or systemic structures), describing an incident as symbolic
violence makes a statement about the way that violence is thought about or the way that
the actor intends to achieve the goals of the violent act.
Thus, we see that the systemic violence of capital punishment (where the system in
authority behind a legal code operates against the individual criminal as a member of the
group of criminals) transforms the criminal to be executed into a symbol of all those who
commit the same crime at the same time that it acts against the individual as an individual
criminal.
This is one complexity of symbolic violence: it is not an absolute category. Instead, it
works in conjunction with other understandings of violence. Often, it is found in rhetorical
violence, which explains Zizek’s conflation of the terms; this also explains why it is
conflated with figurative violence. This is the mythological violence present in all religious
traditions, found in stories of the gods, the saints, and the major figures of the tradition. It is
also found in historical reflections on traditional violence, such as war: for some Christians,
the battles of ancient Israel symbolise the struggle against the nations who do not follow
God as well as the permissibility of utilising such violence in modern conflicts. Symbolic
understandings of violence cannot maintain a monopoly on interpretations of violence, as
there are always permutations within the most similar symbolic systems in place between
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combatants. Such interpretations also require some insight into the mindset of the group or
individual participating in the violence to understand what is intended and how victims are
perceived.
Mythological violence: the importance of narrative
When one understands symbolic violence as a particular perspective on acts of
violence rather than as a unique category, the way that observers discuss such violence
becomes very important. Capital punishment does not operate as symbolic violence if
discussions about it do not include reference to the symbolism present in it. Symbols do not
emerge without accompanying narrative: myths (formally ‘stories of the gods’, but more
generally stories about transcendence) are the narratives that rely on symbols of that
discuss a particular way of understanding the world. In the words of Tillich, ‘Myths are
symbols of faith combined in stories about divine-‐human encounters.’33
As symbols are descriptions of the ineffable, so myths are stories of that which
cannot be directly said. Thus, stories of terrorism are not merely stories about the deaths of
many people, or about the actions of the terrorist, or even about the motivation for the acts;
they are stories about the reality of the situation out of which terrorism arises, which
include individual details but transcend them. The symbolic dimension of violence – that
which cannot be directly referenced – arises from mythological representations of the way
things are. The stories create order where before there was only chaos; this order depends
as much on the way that the story is told as it does on the violence that clarifies the
dichotomy.
The stories about symbolic violence are not important only for the group that
performs the violence; the way that the violence is discussed also affects the group targeted
by the violence. This is seen most clearly in the case of terrorism, where proxy victims are
chosen (specifically or randomly) as representatives of the target group, which is thereby
terrorised by the possibility of further violence. This terror is conveyed by the narrative
surrounding the violence, which often remains tacit or is inferred by leaders of the targeted
group.
33 Ibid., 49.
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Take, for example, the September 11 attacks. Al Qaeda communications revealed
that the targets were chosen based on their perceived status as representatives of the West
in general, and more specifically of the aspects of life most antithetical to Islam. But the real
effect of this act of terrorism came not from the story that the actors told, but the story that
the targets heard. Thus, the significance for Americans came from the story told by leaders,
especially President Bush. The attacks were a declaration of war on the American way, an
attack on freedom, perpetrated by people who hate ‘us’ and ‘our’ way of life.
This distinction between the story told by the actors and the story heard by the
targets again emphasises the significance of perspective when it comes to symbolic
violence. The same act can have multiple meanings for those involved, depending on the
story heard about the violence. The symbolic status of the victim must be recognised for
the violence to be symbolic, but it might only be recognised by one side of the conflict;
alternatively, the symbol might represent drastically different realities for the two sides.
Either way, the stories told about the symbols and the acts of violence give symbolic
violence its power through relation to ways of understanding reality.
The Secularisation of Order-Making
Secular symbolic systems
With the decline of the authority of religious systems came the rise of secular
systems. The wide authority of the priest has been replaced with the even wider authority
of the government official; scripture with legal code; and religious affiliation with
citizenship and ethnic identity. The permanent absolutism of religious forms of authority
has been replaced by the mutable absolutism of elected (or appointed or inherited or
conquering) leaders. But the basic structure remains: large systems create and rely on
symbolic systems to explain the way things are. Relatively modern examples include
nationalism, Communism, and libertarianism.
Arguably, the foremost secular symbolic systems in the world currently focus on the
nation. Extreme nationalist movements order the world around the existence of national
borders, governments, and sometimes (allegedly) distinctive national traits. All activities,
whether individually or as part of a group, are intended to reinforce the hegemony of the
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nation. Christian Patriots in the United States order their daily lives around the intertwined
notions of the sovereignty and holiness of both God and America, which is considered God’s
gift to mankind. In their view, the Constitution is as God-‐given as the Bible, and any
attempts to ‘modernise’ or ‘liberalise’ its contents – or distort them by impinging on the
centrality of individual liberty – is the work of Satanic forces. Thus, Christian Patriots join
local vigilante groups (foremost, Posse Comitatus), avoid paying taxes, and prepare for
impending judgement by stockpiling weapons. The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of
the Lord (CSA) was one such group, which combined Biblical literalism with racism and an
anti-‐government stance; a stand-‐off with the FBI resulted in the group’s surrender,
revealing an extensive weapons cache and poison, believed to be intended for an
impending battle against the forces of darkness embodied by the U.S. government.34 The
anti-‐government stance of CSA was not a denial of nationalism, though; it was, in fact, a
combination of nationalism with fundamentalist Christianity, resulting in a desire to
‘return’ the nation to its original, divinely sanctioned form.
Secular symbolic systems often merge with religious systems so that secular and
religious become inseparable. Even when a system does not have any relation with
traditionally defined religions, it includes characteristics of religious systems. Numerous
scholars have suggested that the nation has become the focus of a new civic religion:
‘Structurally speaking, nationalism mirrors sectarian systems of belief such as Christianity,
Judaism, Islam and others that are more conventionally labeled [sic] as religious.’35 The
monopoly on legitimate violence – as well as an ability to engender sacrifice – allows
nations to erect systems with themselves at the centre; these traits were once solely
possessed by religious communities, but have been transferred to a large degree to widely
recognised secular authority.
The tangle of the religious and the secular in symbolic systems leads to unexpected
relationships: the battle of the West against Communists adopted the rhetoric of the battle
against the godless; national leaders of North Korea have become in a sense deified as the
centre of the primary ordering system for the nation’s residents; conservative activists in
the US portray their opposition to liberal politics as a struggle to preserve that nation’s 34 Stern, Terror in the Name of God, chap. 1. 35 Marvin and Ingle, “Blood Sacrifice and the Nation,” 767.
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Christian roots. James Aho has argued that right-‐wing activism in the US is cyclical, re-‐
emerging every 30 years, ‘and like today’s Moral Majority, Inc., or the 700 Club, each has
been led by Christian pastors…’36 In any society which allows for the separation of religious
and secular, religiously-‐minded activists will create systems that entangle the two
categories.
One can see that contemporary understandings of the way things are, supported by
symbolic systems, often blur the line between secular and religious. While the absolute
influence of strictly religious systems has decreased – most often found in cults, radical off-‐
shoots, and fundamentalist movements that seek to return to a perceived historical
condition – hybrid movements have emerged, with religious leaders and activists adopting
secular causes, frequently tied to the nation or international systems such as forms of
governance or economics.
Myth and ritual accompanying secular symbolic systems
Myth and ritual bear strong religious connotations; they are best understood,
though, as stories and recurrent events that support systems of structuring the world.
Sociologists have argued that civic (typically secular) communities include rituals as a
means of identity-‐formation, as well as reminders of the priorities of the group. Charles
Kurzman suggests that, among other things, ‘rituals offer a set of ready-‐made—though
always contradictory—interpretations that allow people to assimilate information into
established categories of understanding.’37 Modern secular rituals include filling out a birth
certificate (officially welcoming a newborn child into the community), citizenship
ceremonies (welcoming ‘converts’ of location to their new nation), and participation in
censuses (identifying oneself according to a variety of criteria). Collective rituals – those
with significance for the group as opposed to significance for an individual – include
inauguration ceremonies38 (officially declaring a new leadership) and official celebrations
of national holidays (commemorating important events in group history).
36 Aho, The Politics of Righteousness, 221. 37 Kurzman, “Meaning-‐Making in Social Movements,” 6. 38 Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” 4.
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Similarly, myths accompany all attempts at order-‐making. Young students are
taught stories about the major figures of the nation, just as children undergoing religious
instruction are taught stories about the major figures of their tradition. Contemporary
forms of media portray the stories of the formation or defence of the nation often
relocating them to a modern setting: Roland Emmerich’s film Independence Day portrays a
new battle for America (and the world, although that is de-‐emphasised), with many overt
references to the American War of Independence and related notions, not least of which is
the name of the film.39 Leaders of symbolic systems tell stories that legitimate their
authority, placing themselves firmly within a tradition of similar figures as individuals who
fulfil a communal need. As with Bourdieu’s system of symbolic power, such leaders rely on
both myth and ritual to justify their status; they also repeat the stories and events to ensure
that the system continues to exist.
Often, the myths and rituals on which symbolic systems most depend are not
blatant, intentional productions. In referring to nationalism, perhaps the dominant
contemporary secular symbolic system of order-‐making, Michael Billig suggests that many
of the symbols that ensure the success and perpetuation of the system are banal, subtle,
and unrecognised.40 Categorising symbols of the nation as either ‘waved’ or ‘unwaved,’
Billig’s story of nationalism is one of a constant system of reinforcement. Equally important
are the national celebrations and the ubiquitous national flag; the national symbols present
on a nation’s currency (or national variations of international currency, in the case of the
Euro) contribute to the power of nation-‐states as strongly as do coronation or inauguration
ceremonies. These subtle myths and rituals provide the baseline level of attachment to
which the majority of a group’s membership adheres even in times when group identity is
not a prominent. These stories and events create the situation wherein symbolic systems of
understanding the world gain authority and establish a hegemony.
39 Emmerich, Independence Day. 40 Billig, Banal Nationalism.
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Secular symbolic violence
Secular forms of symbolic violence, like their religious correlates, are attached to
symbolic systems of order-‐making; the symbolic victims, chosen as proxies for the intended
target, cannot be identified without these understandings of the way things are. The
violence that operates through the proxy victims both depends on and reinforces the
symbolic systems. That is, symbolic violence assumes the existence of the system that it
aims to support. In this sense, it is a sort of violence that attempts to understand reality by
increasingly making order out of chaos (namely, by spreading the reach of the symbolic
system).
This sort of violence is obvious under religious guises: the most blatant examples
are wars of conversion that use violence to add adherents (and territory and wealth) to a
religious tradition. The same mechanism operates outside of religion, though. Nationalist
violence seeks to add adherents to a particular way of understanding the world via a
particular nation-‐state. Racist violence seeks to convince unaffiliated persons that the
racist ideology is correct, while simultaneously eliminating any individuals who cannot toe
the racist line. Communist violence seeks to persuade non-‐communists that all other
systems are destined to fail.
These sorts of violence operate via carefully chosen victims. Violent nationalists
target those with competing national conceptions or those who otherwise reject the
particular nationalist system (for example, anarchists). Violent racists target the so-‐called
‘race enemies’ in an attempt to eliminate a perceived threat while at the same time
demonstrating that the threat is real. Violent communists target those who oppose their
system, whether by advocating capitalism or supporting a corrupt version of the activist’s
ideal. The stories that accompany the violence justify the choice of the proxy victim, telling
a story of why this individual, group, or thing must be destroyed based on its relationship
with the intended target, typically a rival system. The American government in World War
2 thus told stories about Japanese-‐Americans that related them to the Japanese enemy,
justifying their persecution by connecting their detention to defeat of the enemy. White
supremacists in the American South in the mid-‐20th century did not just attack African-‐
Americans, but told stories in the community of why the person was attacked. In this sense,
symbolic violence can be said to be performative: it intends results beyond the immediate
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effects of the attack, attempting to both hurt a more distant target and convince any non-‐
aligned observers to join its cause. Whether religious or secular, it is fundamentally a sort
of violence that attempts to establish or reinforce a hegemony; it cannot fulfil this function
without accompanying myths and rituals which place the acts of violence within a course of
action authorised by a particular understanding of the way things are.
Examples of Symbolic Violence
In the following pages, several forms of symbolic violence are explored in an
attempt to make the abstractions discussed above more concrete. While far from
exhaustive, the examples below have been chosen for their depictions of the key
characteristics of symbolic violence, while simultaneously demonstrating the complex and
often subtle ways that violence inhabits a symbolic dimension. Through each of the
examples, the role of the accompanying narratives is emphasised, as they reveal the
intentions of the actors and the symbolism present in the victims.
Sacrifice: scapegoating and self-sacrifice
Perhaps the foremost form of religious violence is sacrifice. The central act of
Christianity is an act of divine sacrifice; Biblical Judaism oriented itself around animal
sacrifices performed in the temple; so-‐called ‘pagan’ religions have been vilified for the
alleged brutality of their sacrificial practices. The reasons for sacrifice are myriad; rather
than attempting to provide a comprehensive look at sacrifice, the following paragraphs
provide a look at a few formulations of the practice. Instances of sacrifice where proxy
victims are not utilised to reach the target of the sacrifice will not be considered.
René Girard has popularised the notion of the scapegoat in academic circles. While
diverging from the Biblical source of the term, Girard aptly describes a phenomenon of
group life and persecution: the tendency for a majority to look for a minority population on
which to blame some particular set of troubles. In the opening pages of The Scapegoat,41
Girard cites a medieval text concerning a town that begins to feel the effects of a plague. 41 Girard, The Scapegoat.
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Quickly, the townspeople identify the Jewish inhabitants as the cause of the plague and
begin to plot action to remove those who allegedly caused the sickness from the
community and thereby restore health. This story, common during the period, exemplifies
the use of the scapegoat mechanism: a community that perceives some harm searches for
an individual or group upon whom the blame can reasonably be cast; with a cause
identified, action is taken to restore the healthy status of the community.
Girard’s theory underemphasises the symbolic nature of those designated as
scapegoats. While properly emphasising the differences between the majority community
and any population that can be classified as a scapegoat, Girard does not recognise that the
scapegoats come to represent a larger antagonistic group. He argues that the scapegoat
mechanism is effective only to the extent that the scapegoats are fully purged (and the ills
for which they are blamed alongside them); it is arguably more appropriate to say that the
scapegoat mechanism is effective only to the extent that it identifies a foe and persecutes
the scapegoat as the local representative of that foe. Thus, in the example cited in the
beginning of The Scapegoat, the Jews are not targeted for persecution simply because they
are Jews, or because they are present in the community, or because they are an easy target,
or because they can receive the blame for the introduction of sickness, or because they are
‘guilty’; they are targeted because they represent the larger allegedly antagonistic Jewish
people, and because they can be targeted more easily than the entire Jewish people, and
because turning them into scapegoats will have a noticeable – hopefully positive – effect on
the community. Without symbolising a larger antagonistic force that opposes the
community as a whole, applying the scapegoat mechanism to the Jewish population would
not have any effect greater than the removal of an individual criminal: it would still leave
the community vulnerable to similar repeated attacks. Instead, the Jews in the town stand
in for the larger Jewish population. Their removal represents the removal of the entire
perceived threat posed by the Jews.
Such scapegoating has modern parallels, although they are rarely so blatant. Right-‐
wing xenophobic political groups in Europe turn immigrants into scapegoats, accusing
them of causing cultural, economic, religious, or political decay: the immigrants are the
proxy for all people who are different than those in the xenophobic groups. The rhetoric
(and action, where action is taken) of such groups focuses entirely on the proxy victim; the
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wider intended target represented by the immediate victim is implied more subtly than in
the scapegoating of Girard’s example. Militant pro-‐life activists in the US often adopt the
language of cleansing or removing a cancer when they attack ‘baby killers,’ who are chosen
based on their vulnerability and convenience, and as representatives of all those
contributing to the perceived moral decay of the nation.
Whereas Girard’s depiction of scapegoating requires the perception of harm prior to
searching for the scapegoat, modern scapegoating often involves the simultaneous
perception of harm and identification of a target; it could be argued that scapegoating
sometimes starts with the target, then searches for the harm for which the target can be
blamed. For example, the US restaurant chain Chick-‐fil-‐A has recently entered into a religio-‐
political conflict when its president made comments regarding his stance on gay marriage
rights: ‘I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him
and say, “We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage."… I pray God's mercy
on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the
audacity to define what marriage is about.’42 These comments seem to identify a scapegoat
without attaching an already present harm to the group; instead, the groundwork has been
laid for future action to be blamed on the group that led to ‘fist-‐shaking’ at God. Whether a
scapegoat or a perceived harm is identified first, the chosen scapegoat is utilised as a proxy,
an immediate victim, standing in place of a larger target that cannot be as definitively
purged from the community.
Secular scapegoating occurs in modern law enforcement, among other places. If a
particular law enforcement body does not have the resources to effectively alter the state
of crime within its jurisdiction, it may choose to target specific individuals vulnerable to its
action to demonstrate its commitment to combating the body of criminals represented by
that individual. Thus, small-‐scale drug dealers might be arrested for both immediate and
symbolic effects: immediately, to remove one individual who serves as an entry node for
illegal activity in a community; symbolically, to normatively reject the presence of such
criminals and such activity in the community. These sorts of activities may have little long-‐
term practical effect on the situation in the community (namely, the presence of illegal
42 “Chick-‐fil-‐A President Says ‘God’s Judgment’ Coming Because of Same-‐Sex Marriage.”
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drugs), but are intended to demonstrate both the powerful antagonism to the group of law-‐
breakers and the internal authority of the law enforcers.
Scapegoating occurs wherever a hegemony feels itself under threat. Leaders of the
group identify a minority which they feel can be successfully acted against. After
establishing that this minority is to blame for the threat, action is taken to remove the
minority in its entirety from the domain under the control of the hegemony, with the
expectation that this removal will simultaneously remove the threat and prevent (or at
least discourage) future threat. This course of action supports the authority of the
hegemony (which is another name for a symbolic system of understanding the world)
against other systems by turning vulnerable victims into proxies for a larger target that
threatens the stability of the system.
Another typical formulation of religious violence is self-‐sacrifice, more commonly
(though sometimes imprecisely) referred to as martyrdom. While there is some debate
regarding the criteria for martyrdom, especially between diverse religious traditions,
central characteristics include the individual’s death being directly attributed to one’s
status as a member of a religious tradition, whose death therefore represents the conflict
between that religious tradition and the authority that led to the individual’s death; and the
willingness of the individual to die. Of course, martyrdom can be a matter of immediate
rather than symbolic goals. The death of a particularly antagonistic religious leader might
be due to specific characteristics of that individual rather than the symbolic position as
leader of a community (for example, the death of Archbishop Oscar Romero is often
thought of in this way). Self-‐sacrifice can also be a matter of saving other lives with one’s
own death rather than participating in a larger conflict between groups. The self-‐sacrifice
of jumping on a grenade is not symbolic violence: the individual performing this act does
not die as a proxy for a larger intended target, but to save the lives of those who would be
killed otherwise; the primary intended results of such action are direct rather than indirect
and are specific to those present rather than applicable to a larger group.
Looking to conflicts between systems of order-‐making (and groups associated with
such systems) reveals the symbolic violence present in self-‐sacrifice. The early Christian
martyrs willingly went to their deaths as witnesses for their faith, which included a way of
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understanding the world that clashed with the dominant Roman understanding prior to the
Edict of Milan. In his epistle to the Magnesians, Ignatius of Antioch remarked that ‘the
unbelievers bear the stamp of this world, while the believers, animated by love, bear the
stamp of God the Father through Jesus Christ, whose life is not in us unless we are ready of
our own accord to die in order to share in His Passion.’43 This comment reveals the
perceived divergence between the Christian order and the non-‐Christian order, grouped
together as ‘unbelievers.’ Ignatius’ impending martyrdom was a matter of both emulating
the Passion of Christ and playing his role in the conflict between those stamped by the
world and those stamped by God.
A similar sort of conflict is seen in the recent self-‐sacrifice of Mohamed Bouazizi,
whose self-‐immolation is generally regarded as the incident that led to the Tunisian
revolution. Following a negative interaction with government officials, Bouazizi attempted
to seek redress from higher-‐ranking authorities; these officials refused to speak with
Bouazizi. Only then did he douse himself in accelerant and light himself on fire, suffering
severe burns over 90% of his body before onlookers were able to extinguish the flames.
While it is impossible to know Bouazizi’s specific motivation for, his attempt to work
through government channels to seek justice is best understood as adherence to a
particular (symbolic) power structure. His next course of action demonstrated his rejection
of that structure, supporting instead a system based on extreme action that intended to
elicit a conventional (non-‐extreme) response. The conflict over ways of understanding the
world is perhaps more subtle in this case than in the case of the martyrdom of Ignatius;
however, it is clear that Bouazizi’s actions initially operated out of an understanding of
regulated, normalised justice. When this failed, Bouazizi’s understanding (and
expectations) of justice changed; ‘the ways things are’ was not as he initially perceived, so
he took action in line with his new understanding. Self-‐sacrifice for Bouazizi was a method
of demonstrating the insufficiency of the dominant system; without itself proposing a new
system, it encouraged the beginning of a process to do so. This is the role of self-‐sacrifice in
symbolic violence: its extremity, its abnormality draws attention, which is then redirected
to the actor’s motivation. As such extreme action is taken only in rare circumstances, it is
43 Ignatius of Antioch, “St. Ignatius of Antioch: The Epistle to the Magnesians,” line 5:2.
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clear that it opposes not just individual acts but the system that allows for perceived
injustice (or other insufficiencies perceived by the actor); thus, it is a stage of symbolic
violence that challenges the symbolic system by making the actor a proxy victim, standing
in for all those who have been harmed by the current system. Particularly when followed
by additional acts of self-‐sacrifice (as in Tunisia), these acts reveal that there is a competing
way of ordering the world, and that individuals can be assigned symbolic value that makes
their death more than just the death of an individual.
Generally speaking, sacrificial violence demonstrates a form of symbolic violence
where carefully-‐chosen victims are the most effective symbols: the victims are chosen due
to certain perceived characteristics which match the goals of the individual or group
offering the sacrifice. Alternatively, sacrificial victims that are not carefully chosen can be
retroactively assigned characteristics, justifying the seemingly random deaths with a sort
of transcendent understanding (or fate) that perceived the characteristics of the victims
that were hidden until now, when those offering the sacrifice make such knowledge public.
Sacrifice does not function properly when the victim is selected without reference to
specific criteria, as the object of sacrifice must somehow correspond to the intended effect
of the sacrifice (if only to the extent of following prescribed regulations in the hopes of
attaining prescribed benefits). The specificity of this criteria is variable, though: sacrificial
victims selected seemingly based on convenience (for example, the sacrificing of defeated
warriors in indigenous Latin American traditions) meet the basic criteria required of the
sacrificial act: those sacrificed demonstrate the dominance of the sacrificers by revealing
their own weakness, itself demonstrated through defeat or capture. While the level of
specificity itself is variable, sacrifice generally demands more careful selection of proxy
victims than other forms of symbolic violence.
This specificity is not necessarily recognised by both those who offer the sacrifice
and those who are sacrificed, however. The Romans who martyred Ignatius did not
recognise some special quality in him that qualified him to serve as a proxy victim who
would achieve certain goals (such as the intimidation of the Christian community and the
reinforcement of the Roman state religion); rather, Ignatius recognised his unique
qualifications as a sacrifice and conveyed that meaning to his community. Again, this
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reveals the complexity of perspective when considering symbolic violence. For the Romans,
Ignatius’ death was simply the punitive death of a criminal; for Ignatius and the Christian
community, his death was an act of sacrifice that represented the symbolic conflict
between their system and the dominant one of the time. Depending on perspective, his
death both was and was not an act of sacrifice; it both was and was not an act of symbolic
violence.
Terrorism
The primary formulation of symbolic violence in the contemporary world is without
question terrorism. While acts of terrorism might claim fewer lives than other forms of
violence, international politics seems to be driven by a combination of economic concerns
and the fear of terrorism. One might think that such a powerful force would have a strong
theoretical base with a universal definition, but this is not the case. Scholars have dedicated
entire books to issues of defining the term. In an extended look at various definitions of
terrorism, Schmid and Jongman identified twenty-‐two word categories used in common
definitions, such as ‘fear, terror emphasized,’ ‘violence, force,’ and ‘victim-‐target
differentiation.’44 Their later attempt to define the terror included sixteen of these
elements.45 For the purposes of this discussion, a more simplistic definition will be
employed: terrorism is the use or threat of violence where the immediate results are
secondary to indirect, psychological effects as demonstrated by a non-‐specialist use of the
term ‘terror’; that is, a violent act is terrorism if it intends to disrupt a hegemony (or
counter-‐hegemony) by inducing a state of fear in the population under the authority of the
hegemonic system through the intermediate result of violent harm. The psychological
dimension of terrorism implies the use of proxy victims, as collective impressions resulting
44 Schmid and Jongman, Political Terrorism, 5–6. 45 “Terrorism is an anxiety-‐inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-‐)clandestine individual, group, or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal, or political reasons, whereby – in contrast to assassination – the direct targets of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat-‐ and violence-‐based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperiled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought.” ibid., 28.
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from effects on an individual require identification of the group with the affected
individual.
This focus on what one scholar calls ‘disorientation’ of the group – that is, a
disruption of the group’s system – rather than the more obvious effects of the removal of a
person or an object and that thing’s attendant functions reveals the indirect nature of this
sort of violence.46 What is perhaps less obvious is the use of a symbolic (proxy) victim.
Terrorists themselves have recognised this, though. Speaking of the kidnapping and
murder of the prominent Italian politician in the late 1970s, Mario Moretti, a leader of the
left-‐wing group that committed the act (The Red Brigade), argued that ‘we did not kidnap
[Aldo] Moro the man, but [rather] his function.’47 While this could mean that the group
acted against a person who played a certain role, the distinction between the man and his
function points to a difference between the immediate role and the symbolic role of Moro;
the group did not even act because Moro was a prominent politician, but rather because he
was a symbol of the system that the group was attempting to fight.
Other scholars have noted this symbolic function of terrorism. Thornton suggests
that it is best understood as ‘a symbolic act designed to influence political behavior by
extranormal means, entailing the use or threat of violence.’48 Bruce Hoffman argues that
socialist terrorists in Russia in the early 20th century selected their targets based on ‘their
“symbolic” value as the dynastic heads and subservient agents of a corrupt and tyrannical
regime.’49 Selecting targets based on their symbolic value gives terrorism its
disproportionate power (when compared with conventional accounting of the effects of the
attacks, i.e. the destruction of property, the loss of capabilities, etc.); it ‘is deliberately
conceived to have far-‐reaching psychological repercussions beyond the actual target of the
act among a wider, watching, “target” audience.’50 This expanded audience is targeted by
means of the employment of a symbolic victim, one who in some way represents the target
audience.
46 Thornton, “Terror as a Weapon of Political Agitation.” 47 Quoted in Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, 159. 48 Thornton, “Terror as a Weapon of Political Agitation,” 73. Italics in original. 49 Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, 18. 50 Ibid., 38.
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Victims of terrorism might be understood as symbols in more than one way. The
first, perhaps most intuitive way, is to symbolise the wider population. Such an act leads
other members of the targeted group to think ‘It could have been me. I could have been the
victim of this attack.’ The second dimension of the symbolic victim represents a future
victim: ‘I could be next.’ This symbolism is perhaps secondary and more easily contained by
the authority attempting to combat (and ultimately defeat) terrorists; the fears of future
victimage decrease – though perhaps never truly vanish – when the threat of future attacks
decreases. The difference is anxiety over the amount of violence that has already occurred
and over the possibility of future violence, a subtle distinction perhaps, but one important
when considering the effects of particular acts of terrorism. The anxiety over future
violence, in extreme, results in the disorientation referred to by Thornton as the goal of
terrorists: disorientation leads to destabilisation of the current system (of understanding
the way things are), which provides the terrorist (or other opportunistic actors) the chance
to promote their own system.51
Like all forms of symbolic violence, terrorism relies on myth for its efficacy. Myths of
terrorism take the form of spreading awareness of the individual acts and the context in
which they arise (including at least partial recognition of the reasons for them). Without
such awareness, terrorism would be reduced to acts of violence with conventional results.
Thus, Thornton distinguishes between terrorism and similar acts that lack the
psychological effects conveyed by public awareness (perhaps better called propaganda): ‘If
the objective is primarily the removal of a specific thing (or person) with a view towards
depriving the enemy of its usefulness, then the act is one of sabotage. If on the other hand,
the objective is symbolic, we are dealing with terror.’52
Hoffman presents a look into the motivation of the terrorist that again reveals that is
a tool in conflict between symbolic systems: ‘The terrorist is fundamentally an altruist: he
believes that he is serving a “good” cause designed to achieve a greater good for a wider 51 This explains Thornton’s terminology of the terrorist as agitator and the presiding authority as incumbent. Such terminology can be applied to symbolic violence in general, as long as one recognises that the presiding authority can be the authority of an internal counter-‐hegemonic group and the agitator the hegemonic authority that wishes to disrupt the internal disruption. 52 Thornton, “Terror as a Weapon of Political Agitation,” 78. As noted previously, the symbolic dimension of terrorism is revealed in its focus on secondary, psychological effects over the primary effects of non-‐symbolic violence.
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constituency – whether real or imagined – which the terrorist and his organization purport
to represent. The criminal, by comparison, serves no cause at all, just his own personal
aggrandizement and material satiation.’53 This altruism is inseparable from the values of
the symbolic order to which the terrorist belongs. The good sought is determined by the
system of order-‐making for which the terrorist fights, defined against the allegedly faulty
system against which the terrorist acts. Thus, the victims of terrorism are selected to depict
the inadequacy of the incumbent, while simultaneously demonstrating the vulnerability of
the ways things are (further reinforcing the notion of inadequacy).
In the previous section, we noted that sacrifice is a form of symbolic violence where
the symbol functions best when carefully chosen. Terrorism, on the other hand, operates
best when the symbol is (at least apparently) chosen with minimum discretion. For
maximum effect, the terrorist selects the proxy with the intent of destabilizing the entire
group that supports the hegemony opposed by the terrorist. This is accomplished by
creating conditions wherein as many members of that group as possible identify with the
proxy victim as easily (and preferably unconsciously and automatically) as possible. Thus,
contemporary terrorists often choose their proxy victims based on nominal group
membership: the victims of 9/11 were randomly chosen with the understanding that
anyone present in the World Trade Center would be at least a nominal member of the
Western hegemony that Al Qaeda wished to combat. In conflicts where the terrorist group
has a more restricted target – for example, the Italian Red Brigade (whose kidnapping of
Aldo Moro was mentioned above) who wished to change the government without radically
changing Italian society – the proxy victim must come from a smaller pool of candidates, as
the intended changes are more localised. Moretti’s group wished to change the Italian
leadership rather than Italy as a whole; thus their victim had to come from the leadership
and was best symbolised by the head of the perceived political elite. A perception of
indiscriminate violence increases the psychological reach of terrorism, thereby
compounding the often limited immediate effects of the act. In short, acts that are
perceived as being random connect the proxy victim with a larger target, while
53 Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, 43.
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simultaneously requiring less intentional identification or devotion on the part of the
members of the target group. When a proxy victim is intended to symbolise the target a
larger pool of potential victims (either as an intermediary for the target system or as the
final target themselves), the appearance of indiscriminate victimisation maximises the
tendency of the target members to identify with the victim. The power of such violence (or
perhaps the tendency for contemporary people to automatically interpret shocking acts of
violence as terrorism) reduces the complexity of this form of violence, as perspective
becomes less important. Rather than varying sides interpreting the act as either symbolic
or direct and immediate, perspective in terrorism often focuses on analysis of the
legitimacy of the means and of the systems set in conflict.
Genocide and ethnic cleansing
In a final brief example, genocide will demonstrate further complexity of symbolic
violence. Generally speaking, genocide or ethnic cleansing is not properly understood as
symbolic. When the goal is not simply the removal of a present group of people (for
example, killing a few to coerce the rest to leave) but rather to kill all members of a group,
the individuals killed are not proxy victims. They are chosen as members of a group rather
than as representatives of a group. Thus, an individual Jew murdered in the Shoah was not
killed to symbolise the destruction of the Jewish people; that person was murdered as one
step in the process of the actual destruction of the Jewish people. This distinction requires
some knowledge of the intent of the actor. Both member-‐victims and representative-‐
victims are often treated identically; the distinction lies entirely in the mind of the
individual considering the act, and is often unrecognised at that. It is, however,
demonstrated by the goal of violence, which can include corresponding methods.54
However, there are times when acts of ethnic violence should be understood as
symbolic violence. For example, when a group intends to remove all groups of people who
do not live up to some standard of ‘racial purity’ and demonstrates this intent by lynching
an African-‐American, that group commits symbolic violence: the lynched ‘foreigner’
(sometimes more extremely identified as sub-‐human) represents what will happen to all
54 For example, those who are the targets corresponding to representative-‐victims may be allowed to flee, whereas all who are identified with member-‐victims are pursued and killed.
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foreigners if the group is able to carry out their intentions. Here, the victim is a
representative, whose efficacy as a symbol derives from his or her membership in a
particular group (in this case, defined as all individuals not part of the in-‐group that
commits the violence). Such victims of ethnically motivated violence are representative-‐
victims rather than member-‐victims; thus, their death serves an indirect purpose of
intimidation and communication in addition to the direct purpose of removing one
unwanted person.
As demonstrated here, symbolic violence is a complex concept. One act may be a
typical instance of symbolic violence, while another apparently identical act is not. The
difficulty in identifying this indirect form of violence derives from a certain need to adopt
the mentality of the actor (or planner); alternatively, one must decode the communication
that necessarily accompanies such acts to determine whether the violence utilises a proxy
victim as a means of harming an unreachable target, of combating an understanding of the
way things are that is deemed to be unacceptable.
Conclusion
This investigation of violence by means of a proxy victim has revealed the
complexity of the category. Symbolic violence is not best understood as a distinct form of
violence (such as assassination, guerrilla war, or rhetorical violence); instead, it is part of
the tapestry of many acts of violence, which must be carefully unwound to be recognised
independently.
The centrality of myth in symbolic violence cannot be overemphasised. As
demonstrated by sacrifice and terrorism, communication is a key factor in such acts. In fact,
they cannot operate as intended without attendant stories that interpret the acts for the
audience (which often includes the target represented by the proxy victim). Similarly, ritual
accompanies many of these acts; a somewhat formulaic process facilitates the conveyance
of the actor’s message to the audience.
The use of proxy victims is not merely a matter of convenience or efficacy; the
choice of the victim (or the seeming lack of choice) in part reveals the motivation or goals
of the aggressor. A terrorist’s choice of a high-‐ranking official as proxy victim reveals the
centrality of an inimical established order in that actor’s understanding of the world; a
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priest’s choice of an enemy combatant as a proxy depicts the message of impending victory
in some conflict which the priest hopes for or predicts. The random attacks by militant
nationalist Palestinians (often Hamas, though increasingly other groups) targeting civilians
in Israel sends the message as clearly as accompanying communiqués: their fight is with all
of Israel, not just with those in control or those who currently wield weapons. It is
important to understand how the actor perceives the chosen victim, because this will
inevitably reveal something about the actor’s understanding of the way things are and
about what the actor hopes to achieve through the violent act.
It may seem tenuous to tie Paul Tillich’s understanding of the symbol to the use of a
proxy victim; I am certainly not saying that the proxy victim is an idolatrous representation
of the actor’s ultimate concern. But the victims serve as (less ultimate) symbols in that they
participate in the reality in which the actor lives: they represent an unacceptable system
which the actor intends to defeat and replace with the actor’s own. Whether in a formally
religious or secular system, the victim-‐target distinction participates in transcendent
understandings of the way things are.
This sort of competition has no room for neutrality. The symbolic system which
motivates the actor to harm a symbolic victim divides the world into three categories: us,
them, and those who are not relevant or present in any noticeable way. Thus, if one is
involved, one is either one of us or is the Other; and if one is the Other, one must be
defeated. If the Other is somehow safe from direct harm, then our group must identify a
proxy victim through which the Other can be hurt. Myths develop that identify a
susceptible individual or group as a representative of the monolithic Other, and rituals
develop that encompass the proper way to treat such proxies: they must be made victims
to convince the target of its weakness and ultimate defeat.
This form of combat is not exclusive. It does not have only one result. Scholars have
noted that, in terrorism, ‘The murder of one man can be functional in terms of physically
weakening the opposite side, and at the same time be symbolic in terms of psychologically
affecting the conception of reality and one’s place in it for those identifying with the
victim.’55 Thus, ‘the analyst of an act of terrorism should not be misled into thinking that
55 Schmid and Jongman, Political Terrorism, 7.
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each act can have only one objective.’56 Symbolism is often interwoven with other aspects
of violence in the same act: execution as depicted in the infamous Taliban videos of women
accused of adultery serves the symbolic purpose of excising adultery from the community
while simultaneously serving the immediate purpose of punishing the women for their
action.
Despite the difficulty of discovering and interpreting the symbolic dimension of acts
of violence, the insight into the motivation and goals of the actor that is conveyed through
the symbolism justifies the effort required of an analyst or scholar attempting to make
sense of what is often considered senseless, indiscriminate, even insane violence. Too often,
symbolic violence rigorously adheres to certain notions of reason, often with a basis in
widely respected authorities such as the Bible, moral philosophy, or psychology. These
justifications are part of the systems of order-‐making which motivate the violent actor, and
thus must be understood in all their complexity for those who wish to understand (or even
counteract) the actor who makes use of symbolic violence. The task is never-‐ending and
results can never be verified, but the work remains necessary.
56 Thornton, “Terror as a Weapon of Political Agitation,” 82.
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