Slavoj Žižek - Violence

“Violence is usually the arm of the impotent.”

For Slavoj Žižek we have to make a distinction between subjected violence and objected violence.
Objective violence is violence where there is a clear agent – a mobster, a criminal, a terrorizing parent – who did the act of violence. You know the agent of violence. This kind of violence is in the media all the time.
Subjective violence is more invisible and systemic and we do not notice it as violence. This subjected violence is present in the capitalist system, and it is a ‘anonymous violence,’ where there is no clear agent to blame. For example during a economic crisis; it just happens and nobody is responsible.

“I think – that’s the underlying thesis of the book – that, too put it in somewhat bombastic terms, if humanity is to survive, confronting all the crisis we have today, the threat of ecological crisis, the threat of social violence, provoked by new forms of apartheid. One the one hand gated communities, on the other hand people living in excluded areas; slums, favelas and so on. Our next ethical step is to learn, to except to be responsible, even for this objective violence. We say: ‘Sorry, it is objective what can I do [about it]. We are responsible for it.”

Žižek argues that we ‘live in a era where violence is the big taboo.’ Thinks that were seen as tasteless fifteen years ago are now seen as a form of violence. The last decades there has grown a higher sensitivity towards subjected violence. The interesting point is that this sentivity goes hand in hand with  a increase of objected violence and social violence. Žižek states: ‘The paradox for me is that this extreme sensitivity to subjected violence is a very dangerous ideological phenomenon, something which goes hand in hand with social violence.’