Crasses et Voluptés

Modernity is not distinguished by an aversion to violence. Violence is simply protean. It varies its outward form according to the social constellation at hand. Today it is shifting from the visible to the invisible, from the frontal to the viral, from brute force to mediated force, from the real to the virtual, from the physical to the psychological, from the negative to the positive, withdrawing into the subcutaneous, subcommunicative, capillary and neuronal space, creating the false impression that it has disappeared. It becomes completely invisible at the moment it merges with its opposite, that is, with freedom. Martial violence is currently giving way to an anonymized, desubjectified, systemic violence that conceals itself as such because it becomes one with society.

Topology of Violence

Byung-Chul Han