Theorising the history of violence after Pinker

ABSTRACT

Pinker’s 2018 work Enlightenment Now maintains his earlier commitment to Norbert Elias’ sanguine reading of post-Enlightenment human history. It replicates the problems that historians identified with his 2011 work, The Better Angels of Our Nature. Moving past Pinker’s theory does not, however, necessitate a rejection of theoretical or meta-historical approaches to the history of violence. Other recent works concerned with the history of violence offer rival theoretical positions and insights that are central to their success as works of history. Pushing past Pinker’s claim that Elias’ work is ‘the only theory left standing’ for historians of violence, this article demonstrates how theory has been used successfully by other historians. It interrogates the characteristic theoretical claims and concerns of four major approaches: new imperial history, comparative genocide studies, histories of war and society, and the history of gendered violence, and negates Pinker’s claim that no other theoretical tradition is appropriate for the study of the history of violence.

KEYWORDS:

• History of violence
• theory and history
• Steven Pinker
• colonialism
• gender
• genocide studies
• war

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Elizabeth Pedersen-Roberts, Adrian Hänni and the reviewers of Rethinking History for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. Thanks also to Romain Fathi. This article was completed with funding from the Australian Research Council Grant DP180100118.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [SR200200460]; Australian Research Council [DP180100118].

Notes on contributors

Matthew P. Fitzpatrick

Matthew P. Fitzpatrick is a professor in international history at Flinders University. He researches imperial and colonial history, the history of European liberalism and German history. He is the author of Purging the Empire: Mass Expulsions in Germany, 1871–1914 (OUP 2015) and Liberal Imperialism in Germany: Expansionism and Nationalism, 1848-1884 (2008). He has been an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster, Germany and is currently sole investigator on the Australian Research Council-funded project ‘Monarchy, Democracy and Empire: German Imperial Policy before 1914’.

Catherine Kevin

Catherine Kevin is an associate professor in Australian and gender history at Flinders University. Her research interests include histories of gendered violence, pregnancy, maternity and migration. She has recently published Dispossession and the Making of Jedda: Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country (Anthem, 2020) and is the lead investigator on the Australian Research Council-funded project ‘A History of Domestic Violence in Australia, 1850-2020’.