Losing the enemy would unleash unheard-of violence, not peace

Evidence

“Following this hypothesis,” one that would have remained unsubstantiated as (the impossibility of) a history of the enemy, “losing the enemy would not necessarily be progress, reconciliation, or the opening of an era of peace and human fraternity. It would be worse: an unheard-of violence, the evil of malice knowing neither measure nor ground, an unleashing incommensurable in its unprecedented-therefore monstrousforms.” Such a history, which is not a history, constitutes the institutional development of a public sphere in Europe. It is a history without progress, during which the enemy has both become identifiable (“an identifiable enemy-that is, one who is reliable to the point of treachery, and thereby familiar”), during which the enemy has continued to be thought of as the neighbor (“One’s fellow man, in sum, who could almost be loved as oneself: he is acknowledged and recognized against the backdrop of a common history”), and in which he would have remained a neighbor (“This adversary would remain a neighbor, even if he were an evil neighbor against whom war would have to be waged”). — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 344

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox — losing the enemy produces worse violence than keeping it — is the philosophical load-bearing reversal this whole account of enmity rests on, worth sitting with.