The Violent State

by Robert Young, Naked Punch

Whose headless body is this
Whose scarlet shroud 
Whose torn and wounded cloak  
Whose broken voice? (1)

I Meditations on violence 

The macho encounter between Simon Critchley and Slavoj Zizek over competing ethics of violence staged in the recent Naked Punch Supplement left me with the distinct feeling that violence is too important a matter to be left to philosophers.  The problem with violence is that it is not just a concept, or a representation, or a problem of epistemology (though it is a problem for epistemology): violence changes the world, in its various ways, and always violently.