The violence of politics and the participation of citizens

This chapter argues that our analysis of the relationship of violence to politics remains over-reliant on classical theories which have become a ‘common sense’: that violence is ontological to humans and only its legitimate monopoly by the State underpinned by legal rules can enable ‘politics’. This has led us to select the violences which matter to the political realm and ignore others, including those exercised by the State. However, new knowledge of violence and how its relational roots differ from the biological ones of aggression gives us an opportunity to imagine a state that reduces violence and opens up the sphere of politics to citizens’ action on the conditions that reproduce it.