 | Our purpose is to find out whether innocence, the moment it becomes involved in action, can avoid committing murder. We can only act in terms of our own time, among the people who surround us. We shall know nothing until we know whether we have the right to kill our fellow men, or the right to let them be killed. In that every action today leads to murder, direct or indirect, we cannot act until we know whether or why we have the right to kill. |
An electronic version of this English translation can be found over at Radical eBook Archive (along with many others).
• Aug 30, 2010 link notes tagged: art book essay author philosophy modernity revolution murder innocence Camus
| When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such injury that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society [1] places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live — forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence — knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains. |
First published in Leipzig in 1845. The English edition (authorised by Engels) was published in 1887 in New York and in London in 1891. Source: Panther Edition, 1969, from text provided by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, Moscow. Transcribed by Tim Delaney in 1998. (more)
A similar (not identical) argument motivates various “murder by proxy” theories regarding mass murders. See for example Going Postal by Mark Ames (2005) and the documentary Murder by Proxy. How America Went Postal.
• Aug 22, 2010 link notes tagged: communication society community murder mass murder killer murderer killing spree proxy murder by proxy blame bias determinism book author responsability representation
✖ Via Lady, That’s My Skull: “The Soulless Entity” from Thrilling Wonder Stories #1 (January 1931). Art by Frank R. Paul.
He put the knife in the robot’s hand and caused the arm to raise. Then something went wrong.
Learn more about Thrilling Wonder Stories on Wikipedia
• Jul 28, 2010 link notes tagged: technology art comic illustration robot human machine murder violence creation creature creator cybernetic wrong error vintage BW
✖ Via Wikimedia Commons: book frontispiece by Abraham Bosse for Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1651). It was created with input from Hobbes. [click for hi-res]
Learn more about the frontispiece on wikipedia.
Here’s another way to interpret this illustration:
The incorporation of the father on the part of the sons corresponds to the incorporation of the sons of the part of which, upon the death of the father, substitutes for him. What else does the celebrated image of the Leviathan represent, composed as it is of many small human forms wedged in together one against the other in the shape of a scale of impenetrable armor, if not the inclusion again of the murderous sons on the part of the “second” father in one’s own body? (Communitas. The Origin and Destiny of Community by Roberto Esposito, trans. by Thimothy Campbell, Standford: Stanford University Press, [1998]2010, p. 40)
• Jul 09, 2010 link notes tagged: art communication book frontispiece engraving Leviathan Esposito communitas Freud father son murder violence death sacrifice
| One day the expelled brothers joined forces, slew and ate the father, and thus put an end to the father horde. Together they dared and accomplished what would have remained impossible for them singly. Perhaps some advance in culture, like the use of a new weapon, had given them the feeling of superiority. Of course these cannibalistic savages ate their victim. This violent primal father had surely been the envied and feared model for each of the brothers. Now they accomplished their identification with him by devouring him and each acquired a part of his strength. The totem feast, which is perhaps mankind’s first celebration, would be the repetition and commemoration of this memorable, criminal act with which so many things began, social organization, moral restrictions and religion. |
Previously on Skandalon: Freud
• Jul 09, 2010 link notes tagged: communication community hord father son parricide murder sacrifice death destruction life sacred violence society Freud psychoanalysis book author moral religion art totem taboo
✖ Via “Cain flying before Jehovah’s Curse” by Fernand Cormon, c. 1880 (Musée d’Orsay) [click for hi-res]
Si on en croit la Bible, c’est Caïn qui créa la première ville, pour avoir, selon la remarque de Bossuet, où étourdir ses remords. Quel jugement ! Et combien de fois n’en ai-je pas éprouvé la justesse dans mes déambulations nocturnes !
Quoted from De l’inconvénient d’être né by Emil Cioran, Paris:Gallimard, coll. Quarto, [1973]1995, p. 1307
About Fernand Cormon:
At an early age he attracted attention for the perceived sensationalism in his art, although for a time his powerful brush dwelled with particular delight on scenes of bloodshed, such as the Murder in the Seraglio (1868) and the Death of Ravara, Queen of Lanka at the Toulouse Museum. The Musée d’Orsay has his Cain flying before Jehovah’s Curse; and for the Mairie of the fourth arrondissement of Paris he executed in grisaille a series of panels: Birth, Death, Marriage, War, etc. A Chiefs Funeral, and pictures having the Stone Age for their subject, occupied him for several years. He was appointed to the Legion of Honor in 1880. Subsequently he also devoted himself to portraiture. (wikipedia)
• Jul 07, 2010 link notes reblogged from circuitry [via] tagged: art communication death violence murder remorse city painting painter Cioran
| In less than two months, China has seen six cases of men charging into schools and kindergartens to kill and hurt children. On April 28, 29 and 30, there was one incident per day in three separate cities. Last Wednesday, a man with a cleaver killed seven children and two adults in a central China kindergarten, while on Saturday the man behind the April 29 attack was sentenced to death for stabbing 29 children in an eastern province. The situation has become not only very dark but very surreal. |
“Huang Hung is a columnist for China Daily, the English-language newspaper in China. She is also an avid blogger with more than 100 million page views on her blog on sina.co”
• May 30, 2010 link notes tagged: communication excommunication killing murder murderer suicide kids school China lost loser destruction desintegration
| To take a dose of LSD is all right, and you will have the experience of being more or less crazy, but this will make quite good sense because you know you took the dose of LSD. If, on the other hand, you took the LSD by accident, and then find yourself going crazy, not knowing how you got there, this is a terrifying and horrible experience. This is a much more serious and terrible experience, very different from the trip which you can enjoy if you know you took the LSD. Now consider the difference between my generation and you who are under twenty-five. We all live in the same crazy universe whose hate, distrust, and hypocrisy relates back (especially at the international level)’ to the Fourteen Points and the Treaty of Versailles. We older ones know how we got here. I can remember my father reading the Fourteen Points at the breakfast table and saying, “By golly, they’re going to give them a decent armistice, a decent peace,” or something of the kind. And I can remember, but I will not attempt to verbalize, the sort of thing he said when the Treaty of Versailles came out. It wasn’t printable. So I know more or less how we got here. But from your point of view, we are absolutely crazy, and you don’t know what sort of historic event led to this craziness. “The fathers have eaten bitter fruit and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” It’s all very well for the fathers, they know what they ate. The children don’t know what was eaten. |
Think midle eastern wars, energy crisis, Europe financial crisis, unexplainable killing sprees and so forth.
• May 25, 2010 link notes tagged: communication technology media ecology cybernetic deception despair lost confusion generation history context politic economy energy war destruction murder killing spree
| Perhaps a thorough investigation will reveal the “real” reasons for the murders. Perhaps Amy Bishop is mentally ill, or perhaps she is, quite simply, evil. |
David French starts by arguing against what he believes to be an overstatement published in a post on the Chronicle of Higher Education website:
“Academic life as a “petri dish for madness”? We may have a winner for overstatement of the year. At this point, we don’t even know if Amy Bishop was mentally ill. Nor do we know if academic life had anything to do with her killing spree.”
On one hand, French is right : to suggest that academic life alone can explain Bishop’s behavior is to give way to much importance over this single factor while ignoring others. Though it’s true there has been at least one other similar incident (Valery Fabrikant) one needs to take into account multiple factors when trying to understand Bishop’s behavior (she killed here brother in 1986, was charged with assault on another woman in 2002, etc.)
On the other hand, while French condemns what he sees as the “overstatement of the year”, he goes on suggesting that Bishop is perhaps quite simply evil… Looks like a self-contradictory argument.
More importantly, it’s emblematic of what Dana L. Cloud calls a “therapeutic discourse” that is the “dislocation of social problems into a private, familial or psychological frame”. “Such discourse”, adds Cloud “emphasizes individual responsability for and the necessity of private rather than societal response to social problems.” (“Deranged Loners and Demented Outsiders? Therapeutic News Frames of Presidential Assassination Attempts, 1973–2001” by Kristen E. Hoerl, Dana L. Cloud & Sharon E. Jarvis, Communication, Culture & Critique, vol. 2, no 1, p. 84, March 2009).
Dana L. Cloud’s book Control and Consolation in American Politics and Culture: Rhetorics of Therapy (London, Thousand Oaks: Sage Press, 1998) is available online free of charge.
• Feb 22, 2010 link notes tagged: communication critic murder murderer therapeutic psychology individual society death destruction analysis study rhetoric
