Violence includes psychic and representational forms beyond physical force

Evidence

Prevailing conceptions of violence tend to be predicated primarily on its physicality, on producing physical injury through force. Even principal dictionary definitions privilege this sense, reducing to “weakened” and so dependent status meanings that are not or not so directly physical in their force. But as the preceding remarks suggest, this is too constrictive. For there is, at the very least, violence that is psychic, emotional, indeed conceptual. The notion of “violating” sensibilities, of profaning or defiling, bears witness to this latter sense. … This could be teased open a touch to consider what might be called “representational violence” through acts – speech acts, of course, but more broadly various sorts of expression, or articulations – that belittle, that make small simply for the sake of diminishing, of reducing in power, stature, status, standing. The notions of be-rating (B-rating), of de-grading (D-grading) indicate the violence, the disruption, and oftentimes the associated humiliation as well as the bringing up short I took above to be central to the sense of violence. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1819

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces ‘representational violence’ as belittling speech and expression that diminishes status, distinct from physical force.
• XREF: connects to: Objectifying thought commits the mental violence that later becomes physical violence — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 153; Contemplative serenity in prose conceals a hidden violence of authority. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 113; Representational acts that belittle are themselves a form of violence. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1820 (+1 more)