DYSCIVILIZATION, MASS EXTERMINATION, AND THE STATE
Notes
1.
For a combined discussion of Elias’ and
Bauman’s views, see Jonathan Fletcher (1997: 148-175), and Watts (1998).
2.
This is a quite literal rendering of the German title of the last part of the
original German edition, Elias, 1978-9 (‘Entwurf zu einer Theorie der
Zivilisation’, pp. 312-454). It was abandoned for the heading ‘Towards a theory
of civilizing processes’ (my emphasis) in the English editions (Elias
1982, 2000).
3.
Quotations are from the English edition (Elias, 1996).
4.
Elias adds that this was not the only regression into barbarism in the
civilized societies of the twentieth century.
5.
For a thoughtful account of the ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the former Yugoslavia in
terms of a ‘fragmentation’ and ‘disintegration’ of the state and a subsequent
‘decivilizing process’, see Zwaan (1996). For a discussion of a variety of 20th
century developments in terms of civilization theory see also Mennell (1990).
6.
It is worthwhile to note that to this very day the massacres of hundreds of
thousands, maybe millions of Africans, e.g. in the conquest of the Congo (cf.
Hochschild, 1998) merit hardly any mention in the literature on the overall
evaluation of the nineteenth century.
7.
This is a variation on the expression 'regression in service of the ego', which
goes back to Ernst Kris (1959; 312): 'the ego may use the primary process and
not only be overwhelmed by it… under certain conditions the ego regulates
regression…' This refers to an ego-controlled regression in order to accomplish
certain ego-syntonic tasks, as may occur for example during the creative
process or in the course of the patient's psychoanalysis. In the case of
dyscivilization, barbaric episodes occur under conditions of full control by
the state apparatus in order better to accomplish certain objectives the regime
has set itself.
8.
It would be most worthwhile to pursue the themes in Foucault’s oeuvre
that anticipate the present line of argument.
9.
It takes ‘only one wrong turn’ for people to inadvertently become enmeshed in
the inferno of decivilization: this is of course what happened to the hero of
Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the vanities (1987), from the moment he took the
wrong highway exit.
10.
Robert van Krieken (1999) describes one step along that road when he relates how
the Australian authorities took children of (mixed) aboriginal descent away
from their parents, precisely in the name of ‘civilization’.
11.
Cf. Fletcher (1997: 286), who defines civilization a.o. as ‘an expansion in the
scope of mutual identification within and between groups’.
12.
Such an effort might find support in the literature that has emerged around the
concept of ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ states, e.g. Badie and Birnbaum (1983); Migdal
(1988).
References
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Tabel
‘The state, mass extermination and the breakdown of civilization’
Monopolization
of violence (state formation)
Decreasing levels of domestic violence
‘Normal’ civilizing processes:
[NB externalization of violence: world wars, colonial wars]
Monopolization
of violence (state formation)
Increasing levels of compartmentalized domestic violence
‘Dyscivilizing’ processes:
categorical disidentification; compartmentalization (with encapsulated local
decivilizing processes)
[NB externalization of violence: idem]
Demonopolization
of violence
Increasing levels of domestic violence
'Normal' decivilizing processes
pervasive deinstitutionalization, anomie, regression - ‘breakdown’
[NB external invasions, ‘peace keeping missions’ etc.]
Demonopolization
of violence
Decreasing levels of internal violence
‘Civilizing’ processes ‘without a state’?
low-level, local balances of power
[NB external indifference, oblivion]