Violence is force that marks and transforms its object

Evidence

Violence invariably involves force, but it is more than just force. Violence is force the effect of which is to leave a debilitating mark on its “object.” Violence leaves the objects on which it is acted enervatingly transformed, at least in the immediate wake, rent from the state it was in previously and made different by the marking of the force on it. (Daniel Ross has called this a “rupture,” a rupturing.) This “acting on” need not be only from points external but could be an entity, a being or organism, acting on itself, unraveling its auto-immunity from inside itself, literally an unraveling. The thing, the body, the being on which violence has effect is forcibly changed, thrown into a new state, whether physically or experientially, psychically or epistemologically (depending on the nature of the being). The more violent the effect, the more likely will it be a combination of those interactive outcomes, transformations, ruptures. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1817

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines violence as distinct from mere force: violence marks, transforms, and renters its object across physical and epistemic registers.
• DEEPTHINKING: The auto-immune, self-inflicted reading of violence (acting on itself from inside) is a dense conceptual turn worth sitting with — violence not just imposed but unraveled from within.
• XREF: connects to: Objectifying thought commits the mental violence that later becomes physical violence — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 153; The body becomes an anagram dispersed across wounds and automobile metallurgy — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 365; Wounds and scars function as symbolic surfaces for exchanging bodily signs — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 372 (+6 more)