There are things that don’t disappear. Violence is one of them. Modernity is not distinguished by an aversion to violence.1 Violence is simply protean. It varies its outward form according to the social constellation at hand. Today it is shifting from the visible to the invisible, from the frontal to the viral, from brute force to mediated force, from the real to the virtual, from the physical to the psychological, from the negative to the positive, withdrawing into the subcutaneous, subcommunicative, capillary and neuronal space, creating the false impression that it has disappeared. It becomes completely invisible at the moment it merges with its opposite, that is, with freedom. Martial violence is currently giving way to an anonymized, desubjectified, systemic violence that conceals itself as such because it becomes one with society.
The Topology of Violence first addresses the macro-physical manifestations of violence, which take the form of negativity, developing in the relationship of tension between self and other, interior and exterior, friend and enemy. Typically these manifestations reveal themselves as expressive, explosive, massive, and martial. They include the archaic violence of sacrifice and blood, the mythical violence of jealous and vengeful gods, the sovereign’s deadly violence, the violence of torture, the bloodless violence of the gas chamber, and the viral violence of terrorism. But macro-physical violence can also take a more subtle form, expressing itself as verbal violence, for example. Like physical violence, the violence of hurtful language is still based on negativity, since it is de-famatory, dis-crediting, de-grading, or dis-avowing. The violence of negativity differs from the violence of positivity, which arises from the spamification of language, excessive communication and information, and the accumulation of language, communication, and information.
Today’s society increasingly divests itself of the negativity of the other or the foreign. The process of globalization accelerates the dissolution of borders and distinctions. Yet the depletion of negativity should not be equated with the disappearance of violence, since along with the violence of negativity there is a violence of positivity, which is wielded without enmity or domination. Violence isn’t merely an excess of negativity; it can also be an excess of positivity, the accumulation of the positive, which manifests as overachievement, overproduction, overcommunication, hyperattention, and hyperactivity. The violence of positivity is possibly even more disastrous than that of negativity because it is neither visible nor evident, and it evades immunological defense because of its positivity. Infection, invasion, and infiltration—which are characteristic of the violence of negativity—now give way to infarction.
The late modern achievement-subject is free, in that it does not encounter repression on the part of sovereign entities external to itself. But in reality it is just as unfree as the obedience-subject. Once exterior repression is overcome, pressure builds within. Thus, the achievement-subject develops depression. The violence persists unabated. It merely shifts to the interior. The stages of the topological transformation of violence are decapitation in the sovereignty society, deformation in the disciplinary society, and depression in the achievement society. Violence is increasingly internalized, psychologized, and thus rendered invisible. More and more, it rids itself of the negativity of the other or the enemy, becoming self-referential.