Dyscivilisatie, massale uitroeiing, en de staat

Samenvatting

Titel in inhoudsopgave: Dyscivilisatie, massavernietiging, en de staat. Dyscivilization, Mass Extermination, and the State. Is massive violence and destruction a manifestation of modernity, even its very essence, or rather its total opposite: a breakdown of civilization? Although ostensibly, Norbert Elias mainly occupied himself with the civilizing process, he was always, though mostly implicitly so, preoccupied with its complement and counterpart: violence, regression, and anomie. In recent years, a number of his students have returned to these themes. Here, a position is argued that transcends this opposition between modernization and regression: at the core of the civilizing process, another contrary current may manifest itself, allowing extreme violence on a mass scale to be perpetrated toward specific categories of people, while civilized relations and modes of expression are maintained in other sections of society. The concepts of identification, disidentification, and compartmentalization should help to describe and explain these "dyscivilizing" processes in their complex relations to processes of civilization. Adapted from the source document.