Violence and Utopia

This is a pioneering, systematic study of the role of violence in the structure of the political order, formulated in relation to what is characterized as the civil and fraternal orders. While the civil order is constituted upon an aversion to the risk of violent death and structure that guarantees the safety of its citizens, the fraternal order is constituted upon the willingness of the individual to risk one's life in violent confrontation. Boime shows that the necessity and attraction of fraternal affiliation is predicated and dependent upon the presence of equivocation and duplicity within the civil order. He argues that the ideal of peace, implicity inherent in conventional theorizing, involves the traffic of compromises and conciliations that give rise to as much distrust as trust. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of social theory, political science, social psychology, and urban sociology. Contents: Brotherly Interlude I; The White Negro and the Northern Liberal; Brotherly Interlude II; A Political Interpretation of Franz Kafka's The Trial; The Theater; Brotherly Interlude III; Does Political Discourse Have a Limit?; Brotherly Interlude IV; Violence and Myth: A Study of Georges Sorel; Brotherly Interlude V; Notes Towards an Understanding of Violence; Violence and Sociality; Allen Grossman's Poem "The Department"; Revision of Section II Violence and Myth: A Study of Georges Sorel; Second Revision Violence and Myth: A Study of George Sorel; Epilogue for my Brother; Index.