Neutral metamorphoses of technical violence

ABSTRACT

There is a dimension of violence internal to the functioning logic of technical systems and within the transparency of the instrumental vision of technology. Yet it is one of the centres of rotation of the mobile geography of global violence. This article aims to highlight this centre of mobilization of contemporary violence by identifying the neutral character of technical violence. Technical neutrality, being an instrumental field of operation, qualifies only on the basis of the qualities of meaning that move the action of violent subjects, be they individual or collective. In fact, each violent subject uses technologies to enhance the act of violation in order to impose a sense of his order of reality in the victim's sphere of life. However, it is precisely by serving the various ends that qualify the omnipotence of the violent subject that the technique systematically becomes their master. This reversal of the means-ends relationship is one of the accelerating factors of the innovation cycles of the forms of technical violence towards increasingly sophisticated and pervasive degrees. Moving in this problematic context, the article aims to understand how the technical metamorphoses of violence reconfigure the contemporary social bond as well as human identity.

KEYWORDS:

• neutral violence
• technique
• mono(a)theistic state
• zootechnical policy

Notes on contributors

Pier Luca Marzo teaches Sociology of Change and Creativity at the Department of Cognitive, Psychological, Pedagogical and Cultural Studies of the University of Messina, is the founder and director of the international journal Im@go. A Journal of the Social Imaginary and founding member of the board of the imaginary AIS section.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 There is ample scientific literature on the issue of technique; here, I will simply recall two texts having the merit of picking up the debate that in the first half of the twentieth century lay the foundations for a re-elaboration of the relations between man and technique: M. Nacci (ed. by), Tecnica e cultura della crisi (1914–1939), Loescher Editore, Torino 1982; T. Maldonado (ed. by), Tecnica e cultura. Il dibattito tedesco fra Bismark e Weimar, Feltrinelli, Milano 1991.

2 See https://www.ericsson.com/en/mobility-report/reports/november-2019