The Will to Violence: The Politics of Personal Behaviour
By Susanne Kappeler
Published in 1995 by Spinifex Press, 288 pp., $24.95 (pb)
Reviewed by Kath Gelber
The Will to Violence presents a powerful and one-sided critique of the forces which enable violence between individuals to occur. Violence between individuals is taken in this context to mean all forms of violence, from personal experiences of assault to war.
Kappeler's thesis is that violence in all these cases is caused in the final instance by one overriding factor — the individual choice to commit a violent act. Of course, in one sense that is true. Acknowledging alternative models of human behaviour and analyses of the social causes of violence, Kappeler dismisses these as outside her subject matter and exhorts her readers not to ignore the "agent's decision to act as he [sic] did", but to explore "the personal decision in favour of violence".
Having established this framework, she goes on to explore various aspects of personal decisions to commit violence. Ensuing chapters cover topics such as love of the "other", psychotherapy, ego-philosophy and the legitimation of dominance.
However, it is the introduction which is most interesting. Already on the third page, Kappeler is dismissive of social or structural analyses of the multiple causes of alienation, violence and war. She dismisses such analyses for their inability to deal with the personal decision to commit violence.
For example, "some left groups have tried to explain men's sexual violence as the result of class oppression, while some Black theoreticians have explained the violence of Black men as a result of racist oppression". She continues, "The ostensible aim of these arguments may be to draw attention to the pervasive and structural violence of classism and racism, yet they not only fail to combat such inequality, they actively contribute to it" [my emphasis].
Kappeler goes on to argue that, "although such oppression is a very real part of an agent's life context, these 'explanations' ignore the fact that not everyone experiencing the same oppression uses violence", i.e. the perpetrator has decided to violate.
Kappeler's aim of course was to establish a framework for her particular project: a focus on the individual and the psychological to "find" a cause for violence. However, her rejection of alternative analyses not only as of little use, but as actively contributing to the problem, frames her own thesis extremely narrowly. Her argument suffers from both her inability, or unwillingness, to discuss the bigger picture and a wilful distortion of what she sees as her opponents' views.
The result is less than satisfactory. Kappeler's book reads more as a passionate plea than a coherent argument. Her overwhelming focus on the individual, rather than providing a means with which to combat violence, in the end leaves the reader feeling disempowered. After all, there must be huge numbers of screwed up and vengeful people in the world to have chosen to litter history with war, environmental destruction and rape.
Where do we go from here? Those lucky enough to have read Kappeler's book are supposed to "decide not to use violence ourselves". A worthy endeavour, but hardly sufficient to change the world.