Power works by temporalizing violence into avoidable future events rather than present force

Evidence

Where power is concerned, the problem of time takes on a somewhat different form. If it were not for the communicative system of power, it would be necessary for the threat of immediate violence to be continually present in order to bring about the ‘avoidance alternative’ that would keep the violence at bay and so achieve the desired result. The way that power is organized within the political system replaces and makes unnecessary the ‘omnipresence of physical force’. This Luhmann refers to as ‘temporalizing violence’. As he explains, ‘[p]hysical force is put in place as the beginning of the system, which leads to the selection of rules, whose function, rationality and legitimacy render them independent of past, initial conditions’. Simultaneously it is portrayed as a ‘future event’ which can be avoided, if one stays on the right side of those rules. Both time horizons – the initial threat of physical force and the future event that will trigger that force – are transformed into effective regulation through secondary coding by means of law. The system of power allows for a regulated present which is no longer dependent upon the immediate threat of violence and, perhaps even more importantly, cannot be controlled through violence. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 24

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘temporalizing violence’ — a key Luhmann concept showing how power converts physical force into a deferred, rule-bound threat.
• XREF: The ‘avoidance alternative’ mechanism parallels Giddens’s account of how institutional systems substitute routinized trust for direct sanction, and illuminates Darlington’s authority over Stevens without resort to force. — connects to: Slow violence’s deferred consequences give polluters profitable cover for inaction — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 109; Technologies promising shorter wars can extend violence across ecological time — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 624; Slow violence is marginalized by converging forces of inattention — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 850 (+3 more)