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Civilization And Violence: Regimes of Representation in by Cristina Rojas

By Cristina Rojas

Civilization and violence aren't unavoidably the antagonists we presume-with civilization taming violence, and violence unmaking civilization. targeting postindependence Colombia, this publication brings to gentle the ways that violence and civilization truly intertwined and bolstered one another within the improvement of postcolonial capitalism. The narratives of civilization and violence, Cristina Rojas contends, play key roles within the formation of racial, gender, and sophistication identities; in addition they supply pivotal common sense to either the formation of the kingdom and the strategies of capitalist improvement. through the Liberal period of Colombian background (1849-1878), a dominant Creole elite enforced a "will to civilization" that sought to create a brand new international in its personal photo. Rojas explores assorted arenas within which this pursuit intended the violent imposition of white, liberal, laissez-faire capitalism. Drawing on quite a lot of social idea, Rojas develops a brand new means of figuring out the connection among violence and the formation of nationwide identity-not simply within the heritage of Colombia, but additionally within the broader narratives of civilization. Cristina Rojas teaches Latin American politics and overseas political financial system on the Norman Paterson tuition of foreign Affairs at Carleton collage in Ottawa. Borderlines sequence, quantity 19

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Resolution is the moment when antagonisms have to be resolved and strategies are designed to provide a resolution to them. Central to the problem of the resolution of violence is the overcoming of a rivalry where one party becomes the double of the other. According to Lacan, it happens at the level of the symbolic. 16 Therefore, violence is not resolved by the use of more violence; it is speech that puts an end to violence. ”17 The paradox of violence is that it has to be resolved in representation by altering the original violence that gave rise to the manifested violence.

12 This assertion assumes that the quest for progress or civilization did not involve violence, and it does not recognize that the quest for civilization was inextricably linked to the passionate character of political life. The universalism of Western ideals is presumed rather than scrutinized. This explains Safford’s difficulty in dealing with conflict within the elite and between the elite and subalterns. Attempting to understand the nineteenth-century quest for progress without taking into consideration its repressive practices has also served to perpetuate the myth in Colombian history that liberalism’s philosophical base for reform has been inspired by a utopian vision.

63 This illustrates the ambivalence of the creole elite’s discourse after 18 · the will to civilization independence: once the menace of Spanish domination eroded, creoles sought to identify more openly with the European civilization. The “embarrassing dilemma” began to be solved in favor of the creole’s identity. CONCLUSION Creole men concentrated the desire for civilization around them, granting themselves a privileged place in the building of the emergent nation. Different articulations between civilization, gender, and race allowed creoles born in Nueva Granada of Spanish parents to consolidate the power over mestizos, blacks, women, and Indians.

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