Projects | Projekte

Austrian Sience Fund (FWF) Project P26579-G22

Language and Violence

The Ethico-Political Turn to Language After the Linguistic Turn

Grant-DOI: https://doi.org/10.55776/P26579

PI: PD Dr. Gerald Posselt, M.A.

Reserach Associate: Dr. Mag. Sergej Seitz, MA (2014-2016)

Research Institution: Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna

Duration: 01.03.2014–28.02.2019

Funding Amount: 279.183,98 EUR

Although language has been one of the main issues of 20th-century philosophy, and violence has been at the center of interdisciplinary research at least since the 1960s, remarkably the problem of the relation of language and violence has been largely neglected until the end of the 20th century. In contrast, there has been a significant interest in the questions of linguistic violence and vulnerability in recent years: From insulting utterances and injurious speech, religious and political forms of propaganda and hate speech across structural forms of discrimination to hitherto unknown forms of violence that often go along with new media, we are confronted with a wide variety of different forms of linguistic violence in our everyday life. However, there does not exist a satisfying answer to the question of why we are vulnerable at all to verbal utterances and able to inflict pain and suffering on others by simple words. Though it seems clear that our vulnerability to language depends on the fact that we are linguistic and social beings, a systematic analysis of the complex relation of language and violence as well as of the various ways by which we are constituted as speaking subjects remains a desideratum.
 
While common approaches consider the relation of language and violence as an external one or tend to explain linguistic violence either by the act-like character of speech or to reduce it to a structural violence inherent to language itself, the proposed project breaks new ground by focusing consistently on the complex relation of language and violence. The main thesis is that linguistic violence is not a secondary form of an originally physical violence, but rather a form of violence in its own right in which the intrinsic relation of language and violence becomes manifest and that therefore can serve as a key for a more fundamental understanding both of language and of violence. This is backed by the hypothesis that it is possible neither to gain an adequate understanding of interpersonal violence without considering the role of language, nor to gain an adequate knowledge of language without considering the role of violence.

Thus, the project aims at an ethico-political turn to language after the linguistic turn. This turn is by no means just another “turn” in the humanities, but a decisive return to language with regard to its intrinsic entanglement with the ethical and the political – an entanglement that has been largely ignored even by 20th-century philosophy of language. The goal of the project is to provide – based on the analysis of linguistic violence and vulnerability – a non-reductionist account of language and violence that allows us to consider language, along with its cognitive-communicative function, in its subjectivizing and community-grounding dimension, as well as to envisage the different modes and practices by which we are constituted as epistemic, ethical and political subjects.

The Critical Theories Network conjoins theoretical approaches that focus on the critical analysis of contemporary issues within society, politics, economy and culture. While often being exclusively associated with the Frankfurt School, the term "critical theory" is taken in a broader sense, encompassing the critical thinking of the 18^th and 19^th centuries (Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche et al.), the tradition of the Frankfurt School as well as contemporary forms of critical theory formation in the context of post-marxist, phenomenological, discourse-analytical, poststructuralist, and deconstructive approaches.

The aims of the Critical Theories Network are to strengthen and conjoin research and teaching already undertaken at the University of Vienna in the field of critical theories, as well as to provide a platform for research projects and programs that are dedicated to the study, comparison and evaluation of the various critical traditions.

The Critical Theories Network is part of the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs.

Transformations of the Political: Recent Research in the Interplay between Political Philosophy, Social Philosophy and Philosophy of Language

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