Violence disrupts and can both debilitate and renew its targets

Evidence

Violence thus doesn’t simply open up to allow the external in. It tears apart – skin, the psyche, space, society. In short, ways of being, ways of knowing, and ways of acting. And in this tearing apart it doesn’t simply rupture; it disrupts. It brings those affected up short. It redirects – not always an appealing condition. Though as emergency also often opens up possibility, is a possible site of emergence, so the forced disrupting that is the more or less immediate effect of violence can spin those affected into new directions, themselves sometimes debilitating but also possibly renewing. Violence can thus open up, or close down. And often it does both, even simultaneously. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1818

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The simultaneous open-up/close-down dialectic of violence, tethering trauma to emergence, is a genuinely generative and non-obvious pairing.
• XREF: connects to: Violence can both close down and open up possibility, even at once. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1818; Sacralized violence against outsiders provokes reciprocal vengeful cycles that degrade culture — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1834; Violent extremism signals cultural collapse, not traditional cultural resurgence — Scott Atran, The Devoted Actor: Unconditional…, 65 (+2 more)