Violence becomes purely technical and instrumental when bureaucratized

Evidence

Violence has been turned into a technique. Like all techniques, it is free from emotions and purely rational. ‘It is, in fact, entirely reasonable, if “reason” means instrumental reason, to apply American military force, B-52’s, napalm, and all the rest to “communist-dominated” Viet-Nam (clearly an “undesirable object”), as the “operator” to transform it into a “desirable object”.’ — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 287

Categorization

• DEFINE: The ‘violence as technique’ concept — instrumental rationality emptied of moral evaluation — is essential terminology for the course’s analysis of bureaucratic mass exclusion.
• XREF: ‘Instrumental reason’ is the Frankfurt School concept (Adorno/Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment) that subsequent course readings on bureaucracy and exclusion will presuppose. — connects to: Civilization makes violence aversion irrelevant through bureaucratic complicity — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 694; Bureaucratic killing efficiency requires emotional neutrality, not enthusiasm — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 698; Bureaucratic desk work destroys people while hiding causal links from actors — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 97 (+8 more)

Related

• Bureaucracy’s essence is dissociating means from moral evaluation of ends (similarity 0.82)
• Rational bureaucracy rendered murder morally neutral in perpetrators’ eyes. (similarity 0.80)
• Civilization makes violence aversion irrelevant through bureaucratic complicity (similarity 0.80)
• Instrumental rationality cannot prevent mass atrocities and normalizes social engineering. (similarity 0.79)
• Bureaucratic-technical framing enabled depersonalized mass murder at unprecedented scale. (similarity 0.79)
• Genocide required replacing collective rage with bureaucratic obedience (similarity 0.78)
• Individual sadism is functionally inferior to disciplined bureaucracy for mass killing (similarity 0.78)
• Bureaucratic means-ends inversion sustained mass murder beyond its original purpose (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Bureaucratic-technical framing enabled depersonalized mass murder at unprecedented scale. #corroborates (0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 529
• Genocide required replacing collective rage with bureaucratic obedience #corroborates (0.88) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 260
• Bureaucratic-juridical vocabulary itself euphemizes the violence of drone strikes. #exemplifies (0.82) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 491
• Institutional discipline correlates inversely with corporal violence. #complicates (0.78) — , The Rod and the Child, 2001
• Semantic and philosophical redefinitions are being weaponized to legitimate state violence. #expands (0.75) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 122
• Group-based discipline can coerce as powerfully as individual violence #expands (0.72) — , The Rod and the Child, 5601