Gewaltverhältnisse - eine körpergeschichtliche Perspektive

This introduction links the history of violence to the history of the body and the history of the self. It emphasizes therefore not the phenomenology and situations but the genealogy and relations of violence, the power of violence to create very different relations between very different people. Therefore, the introduction sets out how a history of violence not only contributes to the history of the state but also shows how violence generated new discourses and practices of the self as well. Within this kind of history of violence, the body is, thus, not seen as a static target or given tool but as a historical product and in its changing productivity within relations of violence. Against this background the aim of this introduction is to promote the analysis of violence beyond war and mass murder – especially between the 1960s and 1980s.