ClassInfo

The term violence implies both aggression inflicted and aggression received. Violence can therefore be physical, moral or symbolic. Furthermore, it can be more or less intense depending on the circumstances. Françoise Héritier, in her two-volume work provides a definition of violence as "all physical or mental constraints which induce terror, displacement, misfortune, suffering or the death of a loved one; any intrusive act that has the effect, either voluntary or involuntary of dispossessing others; the damage or destruction of inanimate objects." This definition suggests the complexity of theorizing and categorizing violence.

Ecofeminists have argued that oppression and violence form a continuum; that the differences in the exploitation of the earth, of domestic violence, of social violence, of all-out warfare are simply a matter of degree. In other words, all violence is the same. Or is it?

The fact violence is inherent to human behavior has produced an extensive interdisciplinary literature on the subject. This literature has tended to focus on four main strands: institutional violence (war, torture, dictatorial practices, police brutality, genocide); gender, racial or social violence (homophobic aggression, domestic violence, misogynist killings, racial lynching, urban riots, rural vandalism, immigration stigma, religious sanctions), textual violence (exclusionary discourses, hate speech, violence in literature) and social trauma studies (memory syndromes of war, genocide, slavery, dictatorship, colonization, decolonization, exile, etc.). By creating these theoretical frameworks do scholarly theories of violence obscure or illuminate our understanding of its practices? In other words, are the Ecofeminists right or is violence a more complex phenomenon that needs to be analytically teased out?