VOLD OG VÆREN: Antropologi og den voldelige relation

Abstract

The article addresses “the violent relation”

in an anthropological perspective. This

entails descriptions of violent encounters

made by both victims of domestic violence

and by young offenders. The concepts of

being and non-being, subjectivity and

objectivity, construction and destruction

inform the analysis of the violent relation.

The body is the primary locus for an

understanding of the possibility and the

exertion of violence: its power to victimize.

Violence is a way to act on the world

and others which institutes a bodily sense

of agency and power; that is, it becomes a

powerful statement of “self”. The claim

of one actor, however, is made at the

expence of another, whose subjectivity is

affected so severely that it questions its

own being in the world, both somatically

and experientially.