Contagion and violence in contemporary societies : politics, literature and religion

https://doi.org/10.22490/9789586519168
Juan Sebastian Ballen Rodriguez,

Synopsis

As a philosophy professor, I am an enthusiast of ideas and their materialization in books. This project is framed in a spirit of solidarity with teachers who are part of a team of professionals who assist with love and wisdom to students in training in philosophy in the dynamics of teaching and research of a program that is part of the National Open and Distance University (UNAD). The human and pedagogical realities for the attention of this population are very diverse and varied. Most of the time, they are dominated by deeply felt training needs, particularly in political thought and that which is related to the study of violence and social death (thanatopolitics).

And this is so because our students receive their training in philosophy in places different from those of the intellectual metropolis of the great cities of the country. Their geographical and social realities are very typical of the regions of a territory that for long years has experienced dynamics of violence of all kinds, inequalities and other injustices that have remained unknown, given the distances between the peripheral realities of the regions that are alien to the philosophical concerns of the big cities, and which, in a revealing way, have a very particular hold in the fields and in the conceptions of the world of the people who live there.

The relevance of this research work is condensed in the book EL CONTAGIO Y LA VIOLENCIA EN LAS SOCIEDADES CONTEMPORÁNEAS: POLITICS, LITERATURE AND RELIGION, responds to the way in which philosophy diagnoses the social reality in the midst of growing situations of unrest that are experienced in contemporary societies where inequality, gender violence, persecution and sacrifice, migration and forced displacement, massacres and social lynching in general predominate, it is necessary that the human sciences and in particular philosophy offer instruments of analysis that allow the academic and study communities to turn towards the study of the typologies of violence and its different effects in the world culture and in particular in the one that concerns us, namely, the Latin American culture.

In turn, from the lines of research that correspond to the research group of the program of Philosophy in Cyberculture and territory, it has been proposed that one of its paths of inquiry corresponds to the study of the relationship between philosophy and society. The present research seeks to think about the phenomenon of violence. We will demonstrate with this research exercise that philosophy offers insights into this problem that concerns the practical life of human beings and where their political and ideological convictions, ethical and axiological stakes, their economic desires and most pressing emotional motivations are compromised. Violence, as the establishment of evil in history, is the irresolvable expression of the inertia and chaos that pervades societies, particularly those of today.

From which philosophical horizon do we seek to frame the present analysis of violence? It is not easy to determine a single view of the problem, since from the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes to the Martinican thinker Franz Fanon we have dissimilar versions of violence, enriched by the historical processes that nourished them.

For the sake of delimitation, we will turn to the mimetic theory proposed by the French thinker René Girard (1923-2005). We consider that this philosophical approach allows us to think about violence in the dynamic terms of difference and sameness. Indeed, the philosophical dimension of mimetic desire is found precisely in the non-accommodation within the traditional conception of the notion of identity, which has served philosophy to think about all those human quests where self-gnosis, self-consciousness, authenticity, self-knowledge, etc. would take place. As will be appreciated throughout these five studies, the identical, as the place of the same, is neither more nor less than a uniform source of violence, in which it is justified and used to eliminate the rival.



Keywords: philosophy, violence, mimetic theory, René Girard, sociology, sacrifice, crowd

Chapters

  • Capítulo 1. La violencia mimética en las sociedades contemporáneas
  • Capítulo 2. La violencia, la mentira romántica y la enemistad política
  • Capítulo 3. Antígona como un modelo para pensar la racionalidad de los vencidos
  • Capítulo 4. Lo sublime y el sacrificio. El caso de La Vorágine de José Eustasio Rivera
  • Capítulo 5. Del sistema sacrificial al totalitarismo del mercado
El contagio y la violencia en las sociedades contemporáneas
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ISBN-13 (15)

978-958-651-916-8

How to Cite

Ballen Rodriguez, J. S. (2023). Contagion and violence in contemporary societies: politics, literature and religion. Sello Editorial UNAD. https://doi.org/10.22490/9789586519168

Series Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities

Categories Libro de divulgación

Copyright (c) 2023
Sello Editorial UNAD

Published

September 15, 2023
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