| This dissertation contributes to an understanding of nonviolence, defined here as a refusal to submit to, flee from or inflict violence in the face of the violence of the other. It begins with a distinction first made by Gandhi, between the mode of strategic nonviolence, marked by concerns of power, which seeks to deprive the opponent of legitimacy and support, and principled nonviolence, marked by concerns of love for the opponent, and a belief that suffering the violence of the opponent may lead to the opponent's conversion from that violence.;Strategic nonviolence is by far the more common mode of nonviolence at the level of mass actions, often manifesting as strikes, sit-ins, boycotts, etc. It is often held to be effective at bringing about political change with comparatively little violence. Gandhi and King believed in contrast that principled nonviolence was ultimately more effective in this same sense, although most contemporary theorists and practitioners who still embrace principled nonviolence have retreated from this claim, arguing instead in favor of principled nonviolence from religious or ethical grounds.;This dissertation returns to the position of Gandhi and King, arguing that principled nonviolence is ultimately more effective than strategic nonviolence (or violence) in the face of violence, especially deep-seated structural violence. Drawing on the mimetic theory of Rene Girard, it further claims that strategic nonviolence tends to lead to mass accumulations of rivalries and resentments, which can in time issue as explosions of physical violence. Especially problematic in this regard is the mode of nonviolence pretending to be motivated by love, but actually motivated by power. I have termed this mode "moral-strategic nonviolence.";Finally, drawing on Edith Wyschogrod's study of saints, and in analogy to the Lacanian psychoanalytic encounter between analyst and analysand, the dissertation suggests a model for the telos of principled nonviolence as its replication in the lives of others, possible only when it is transmitted not as the fruit of purity and heroic moral achievement, but as an expression of subjective awareness of impurity, brokenness and shared complicity in structural violence. |
