Ten times violence: A review of Portraits of Violence: An Illustrated History of Radical Critique.

Reviews the book, Portraits of Violence: An Illustrated History of Radical Critique by Brad Evans and Sean Michael Wilson (2016). Evans and Wilson's cartoon book offers most delightful engagement with an otherwise rather grim subject: violence and what humans do to one another. The book’s core disproves Steven Pinker’s argument that violence is decreasing. Violence is indeed decreasing but only as long as one looks just at the most visible forms of violence, for instance, war deaths, massacres, genocide, rape, and sexual assault (Pinker, 2015). As soon as one starts to look beyond the headline news—Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria—one discovers that our society might have even become more—not less—violent. Just as Foucault (1995) once emphasized, the cruelty of public dismemberment became mere public executions (guillotine), later moved into prison backyard, and was eventually eliminated in many modern societies. But violence did not disappear. It took on new forms. Much of the brutal violence meted out to peasants and to the working class of a rising capitalism is no longer necessary today. After generations of authoritarian schooling and adaptation to managerial regimes, we have internalized obedience to the ruling elite. This is powerfully supported through a global media capitalism apparatus. Evans and Wilson’s cartoon book shows how this can be achieved. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)
Source: Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research