What is nonviolence ?Étienne Godinot

Translation : Claudia McKenny Engström

10.02.2015

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What is nonviolence ?

Contents• Defining of nonviolence• Concepts : conflict, force, combativeness, violence• Philosophy of nonviolence• Strategy for nonviolent action• Towards a culture of nonviolence

Sources (for this diaporama)

- Bibliography of Jean-Marie Muller, and in particular his Dictionnaire de la non-violence (Relié Poche, 2005)

- Bernard Quelquejeu, Sur les chemins de la non-violence. Études de philosophie morale et politique (Vrin, 2010)

Defining nonviolence

Nonviolence is both a way of life respectful of Man and Nature, and a way of relating and action (social, political, etc.) respectful of ones opponent.

« A way of doing which stems from a way of being »Aldo Capitini (1899-1968)

Clarifying a few concepts *

The conflict

The conflict, latent or open, stems from a tension, a disagreement, a difference. Entering in conflict is to affirm oneself before another, dare to say “no”, seeking recognition of ones rights. Its also means releasing oneself from powerlessness, complaint or submission. It means avoiding the unsaid, which create frustration and unease.

It means allowing oneself to express on the needs, aspirations, interests, values and points of view of all, on the tensions in the group.

It means allowing suffering to exteriorise rather persist in resentment, hatred and violence.

* “Misnaming is to add to the world's woes” (Albert Camus)

The conflict

Accepting conflict is accepting to change, inventing and creating thanks to someone else who is different to me, but who potentially has similar desires to mine.

Conflicts are sign of life, exchange, confrontation, Democracy. To combat violence, conflict needs to be rehabilitated, only resolved in the respect of others.

Conflicts don’t have to be destructive : they can be source of progress, of better interpersonal relations, of a better collective organisation. Conflict builds life when it is animated by dialogue, negotiation and imagination as dynamics of collective life.

The conflict

It is by learning to manage daily small conflicts that we can learn how to handle bigger ones :

- By managing minor conflicts in a couple, man and wife can avoid divorcing.

- By regularly managing conflicts in a classroom, youth clubs or sports clubs, we avoid incivility at school or the uprising of entire neighbourhoods.

- By taking into account the needs of an identity, recognition, natural resources or the territory of a people, we can avoid wars.

The conflict

Conflicts are more often than not, unavoidable, sometimes necessary, often useful, but always uncomfortable, tiring and painful.

Even if it necessary, the conflict is not a normal way for people to interact, between individuals or groups. We can be worried of a couple who never argues, but also of a couple who is always in conflict…

A conflict can destroy life if it is a confrontation of forces. It can degenerate into violence if respect is no longer the rule, if combativeness is not mastered, if anger is not controlled, if the different actors are trapped in a symmetrical escalation of words and gestures.

Combativeness

Combativeness is necessary to deal with conflicts. Combativeness is a strength in life and a necessity to affirm oneself before others, to confront without hedging, to overcome ones fear of acting.

This is the positive aspect of aggressiveness (ad-gradi : walk towards), but it can also express itself in its perverse form, that is destructiveness, pathological, most of the time provoked by past sores.

The first task of a nonviolent action will be to awaken the combativeness of those who suffer injustice.

Photo : Martin Luther King

The struggle

The struggle is a confrontation, a fight to obtain respect of a right, concretisation of a demand, evolution of a law.

Struggle for justice requires just and adjusted means, that is to say, nonviolent.

“To want victory and not want to fight, I say that is to be badly behaved”,

Charles Péguy (1873-1914)

Force (strenght, power)

Force (or strenght, power) is a cause that provokes an effect or movement (a force of traction, of an acid, the strenght of an argument, the power of the soul, etc.).Force is what obliges the adversary to negotiate and/or yield isnot the violence that wounds or destroys him.

The ratio of power creates the conditions of a dialogue allowing to negotiate a just solution to a conflict.

It can result in:

- a simple evaluation by an actor of his or her capacity to mobilise and act, a capacity which is in itself a factor of dialogue and negotiation.

- a confrontation, a relation where forces are released (demonstration, strike, boycott, civil disobedience, etc.).

Photos: - The power of a truck

- The power of a sit-in (Ekta Parishad movement in India)

Violence

Violence is any kind of word, action or omission that violates another human being, his or her rights, identity; what wounds or destroys another, physically or psychologically.

Violence is the result of the absence of words, communication, between different actors. It is the failure and perversion of conflicts, and also very often a cry of desperation towards those who have not heard.

Photos : - Racket in the school-"Ordinary" violence: 10 % of women suffer abuse from their partner

- - Extreme violence : the Holocaust

Violence

Structural violence * is a violence provoked by systems and ideologies of domination, discrimination and injustice.Examples are slavery, colonialism, machism, tax havens, corporate land grabbing, corruption, etc.

That is the mother to all other forms of violence, because it creates within the oppressed, a violence of contestation, later crushed by the violence of repression.

* Johan Galtung. Helder Camara spoke of violence of the “disestablished order”.

The manifestations of violence

AuthorDomination, closing, refusal to admit the injustice of a situation

and the consequencesof his/her behaviour

VictimCaught in complaint,

submission, incapacity to talk with the autor or third party;

résignation or hatred

Third partyOmission to say what he/she saw

(report), refusal to interven, failure to provide assistance

to a person in danger

Lawunjust or inadapted

to the situation

Violence or nonviolence ?

Violence is also a method of action which is sometimes necessary :

- to defend the established order when that order guarantees freedom;

- to combat the established disorder when that one maintains oppression.

That is why violence requires an effective alternative in political action.

Photo below : Peace Brigades International (PBI)

Legitimacy of counter-violence ?

Facing violence, nonviolence seems sometimes impossible or too slow to stop an unbearable situation.

Counter-violence, or a violent action to stop an aggressor from bringing harm to others, even in killing the aggressor if necessary, has been massively used throughout history.

It is legitimate, most of the time abused, in the theories of legitimate defence or of just war, but is sometimes necessary (to stop one man from killing many others on the streets, snipers killing in Sarajevo, Kadhafitanks threatening to destroy Benghazi, etc.).

Counter-violence: which questions to ask

- Can counter-violence – as limited as possible –diminish or will it augment Man’s misfortune ?

- What is the less bad solution short term ?

- What are the consequences on the long term ?

- What must be prepared in order to avoid a similar situation to occur in the future, and replace counter-violence with non-violence more and more ?

Philosophy of nonviolence

Nonviolence (a-himsa) is the decision of principal to refuse all thought, action or institution, which might threaten life or the dignity of another person.

Gandhi invented the term satyagraha, which means “the power of love and truth”, not as preference to ahimsa but to the English passive resistance, which he used at the beginning of his struggle in South Africa. During the salt campaign, he almost always referred to ahimsa or nonviolence.

Philosophy of nonviolence

Nonviolence is nothing else but the realisation of the founding ethical ban: “Thou shall not kill”.

This rule is the common golden rule to all cultures and religions in the world :

“Do not to do others what you do not want then to do to you”, or in its positive version, “Be with others as you wish they were with you”.

Philosophy of nonviolence

Democracy

What grounds politics is Speech. Violence is always a failure of dialogue, failure of politics.

One of the main tasks of Democracy is to invent institutions that aim at solving conflicts in a constructive and nonviolent manner.

Free elections are necessary to democracy, but are not sufficient.

The right and duty to disobey

The rule of majority does not guarantee respect of the ethical requirements that ground democracy.

History has taught us that democracy is more often than not, threatened by blind obedience of citizens rather than their disobedience.

The most efficient form of disobedience towards the State is civil, open and collective, by accepting the penalty pronounced, in order to seek legal evolution.

Photo above: The Vel d’Hiv’ raid (16-17 July 1942))

Kindness and goodness

Nonviolence opens to Man the path of kindness.

Kindness – or what we also call goodness, gentleness, charity, love, tenderness, forgiveness – seems to many the highest representation of transcendence.

“Human transcendence is that possibility to freely take the risk of dying in order to not kill, rather than taking the risk of killing to not die”

Jean-Marie Muller.

Looking at death in the eyes

The anxiety of suffering and death are probably the major causes explaining why Man succumbs to the temptation of violence.

More than anything else, the perspective of death leads to a quest for meaning. Each one, on these topics, is called to adventure in a personal reflection and to define a personal attitude, both orienting ones existence.

Strategy of nonviolent action

The power of injustice and violence in our societies rests on the collaboration (silence, resignation, passivity, etc.) of a majority of the members of this society.

Nonviolence is the non-collaboration with injustice and lying.

Photos : Etienne de la Boétie,

David Henry Thoreau, Leon Tolstoï

Nonviolence, a strength in action

Nonviolent action starts with acts of information, demand, consultation, which are of the persuasivedomain.

But they do not exclude pressure or constraintaiming at disarming the adversary, although they will be led respectfully and with the objective of reconciliation.

Demonstrations, sit-ins, boycott, civil, collective and public disobedience to unjust laws, are all forms of this cooperation.

Photos : - Gandhi weaving during the boycott campaign against English textile- Janadesh March of the Ekta Parishad movement in India, 2007

Political nonviolence

Nonviolent action requires a rigorouspolitical analysis :

- motivations and strength of present actors

- role of third parties , namely public opinion

- clear, limited and attainable objectives

Photos : - “Wall of Shame” between Israel and Palestine- Palestinian nonviolent action

Political nonviolence

Non-collaboration is associated with a constructive alternative programme.

Right Photo : Sheep pen of La Blaquière, illegally built on the Plateau du Larzac, France

Political nonviolence

The realisation of such a constructive programme must allow those who until now have been kept under oppression in minor situations within economic and political structures, to take a hold of their own destiny and participate directly in the management of what concerns them.

Without such a programme, nonviolent action will stay imprisoned by its protests and refusals.

Photos : - Debate en Africa- Nelson Mandela

Towards a culture of nonviolence

Our societies are dominated by a violent culture :

wars of colonisation and decolonisation, violent revolutions, world wars, dictatorships and genocides (XXIth Century)

“War toys” given to children of young age, violent video-games,

bloody lyrics of The Marseillaise, military parades on national days.

A culture of violence

A culture of violence is everything (customs,

institutions,

ways of appreciating and feeling, collective representations, etc.)

within a society, which stimulates in an individual or a public authority, an easy and spontaneous recourse to diverse forms of violence to solve the conflicts created by social life.

Photos :

- Video games based on violence- The violence of industrial breeding

Delegitimize violence

To break a legitimate conception of violence, presented and necessary, honourable, the first step consists in fully taking into account the reality of this violence that flaws our relations to one another.

Then, we must break away from the processes of justification and legitimisation of violence, and show that it is not a fatality.

Photo : experiments led by Stanley Milgram to show submission to authority

A culture of nonviolence

A culture of nonviolence is one developing knowledge, morals, ways of living, social institutions, conscious and unconscious scales of values.

In other words, developing collective ethics in depth, in order to push back individual and social violence

and inscribe the habits of a people into nonviolent conflicts.

Photos : -The monks of Tibhirine- Meeting between Imams and Rabbis at the initiative of the Hommes de Parole

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