Hostname: page-component-55f67697df-q9hcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-10T01:38:47.708Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Puzzle of Extra-Lethal Violence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2013

Lee Ann Fujii
Lee Ann Fujii*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Toronto. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article proposes the concept “extra-lethal violence” to focus analytic attention on the acts of physical, face-to-face violence that transgress shared norms about the proper treatment of persons and bodies. Examples of extra-lethal violence include forcing victims to dance and sing before killing them, souvenir-taking and mutilation. The main puzzle of extra-lethal violence is why it occurs at all given the time and effort it takes to enact such brutalities and the potential repercussions perpetrators risk by doing so. Current approaches cannot account for this puzzle because extra-lethal violence seems to follow a different logic from strategic calculation. To investigate one alternative logic—the logic of display—the article proposes a performative analytic framework. A performative lens focuses attention on the process by which actors stage violence for graphic effect. It highlights the range of roles, participants, and activities that contribute to the production process as a whole. To demonstrate the value of a performative approach, the article applies this framework to three very different extra-lethal episodes: the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam War, the rape and killing of two women during the Rwandan genocide, and a lynching that took place in rural Maryland. The article concludes by sketching a typology of performance processes and by considering the policy implications of this type of theorizing and knowledge.

Type
Research Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , June 2013 , pp. 410 - 426
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adler, Emmanuel. 2010. “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't: Performative Power and the Strategy of Conventional and Nuclear Defusing.” Security Studies 19: 199–229.Google Scholar
African Rights. 1995. Death, Despair, And Defiance. London: African Rights.Google Scholar
Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2011. Performance and Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Andreas, Peter. 2008. Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 1963. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Baines, Erin K. 2003. “Body Politics and the Rwandan Crisis.” Third World Quarterly 24(3): 479–93.Google Scholar
Baker, Kevin. 1995. “The Rape of Nanjing.” Contemporary Review 267(1556): 124–28.Google Scholar
Bauman, Richard. 1992. “Performance.” In Folklore, Cultural Performances, and Popular Entertainment, ed. Bauman, R.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Benford, Robert D., and Hunt, Scott A.. 1992. “Dramaturgy and Social Movements: The Social Construction and Communication of Power.” Sociological Inquiry 62(1): 36–55.Google Scholar
Bilton, Michael, and Sim, Kevin. 1992. Four Hours in My Lai. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Bourke, Joanna. 1999. An Intimate History of Killing. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. 1993. Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880–1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Burds, Jeffrey. 2009. “Sexual Violence in Europe in World War II, 1939–1945.” Politics & Society 37(1): 35–74.Google Scholar
Burke, Peter. 2005. “Performing History: The Importance of Occasions.” Rethinking History 9(1): 35–52.Google Scholar
Caputo, Philip. 1977. A Rumor of War. New York: Ballantine Books.Google Scholar
Carr, Cynthia. 2006. Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America. New York: Crown Publishers.Google Scholar
Chandler, David. 1999. Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, James W. 1998. “Without Fear or Shame: Lynching, Capital Punishment and the Subculture of Violence in the American South.” British Journal of Political Science 28(2): 269–89.Google Scholar
Cohen, Dara Kay. 2010. “Explaining Sexual Violence During Civil War.” Ph.D. Diss., Political Science, Stanford University, Stanford.Google Scholar
Cole, Catherine M. 2010. Performing South Africa's Truth Commission: Stages of Transition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Coll, Steve. 2000. “The Other War.” In Washington Post. Washington.Google Scholar
Collins, Randall. 2006. “Micro-Interactional Dynamics of Violent Atrocities.” Irish Journal of Sociology 15(1): 40–52.Google Scholar
Collins, Randall. 2008. Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danner, Mark. 2004. Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror. New York: New York Review Books.Google Scholar
Des Forges, Alison. 1999. Leave None to Tell the Story. New York: Human Rights Watch & Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l'homme.Google Scholar
Downey, Dennis, and Hyser, Ramond. 1991. No Crooked Death: Coatesville, Pennsylvania, and the Lynching of Zachariah Walker. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Dwyer, Johnny. 2008. “American Warlord.” Rolling Stone, 18 September, 86–118.Google Scholar
Edelman, Murray. 1964. The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Edelman, Murray. 1971. Politics as Symbolic Action. Chicago: Markham Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Edelman, Murray. 1988. Constructing the Political Spectacle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ellis, Stephen. 2007. The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Falassi, Alessandro. 1987. “Introduction.” In Time Out of Time, ed. Falassi, A.. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Finnström, Sverker. 2008. Living with Bad Surroundings. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Fujii, Lee Ann. 2009. Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Fuoss, Kirk W. 1999. “Lynching Performances, Theatres of Violence.” Text and Performance Quarterly 19: 1–37.Google Scholar
Gagnon, V.P. Jr. 2004. The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Garland, David. 2005. “Penal Excess and Surplus Meaning: Public Torture Lynchings in Twentieth-Century America.” Law & Society Review 39(4): 793–833.Google Scholar
Gershen, Martin. 1971. Destroy or Die: The True Story of Mylai. New Rochelle: Arlington House.Google Scholar
Greiner, Bernd. 2009. War Without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam. Translated by Wyburd, A. and Fern, V.. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Grossman, Dave. 1995. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Guss, David M. 2000. The Festive State: Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism as Cultural Performance. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hammer, Richard. 1970. One Morning in the War: The Tragedy at Son My. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc.Google Scholar
Hatzfeld, Jean. 2000. Dans le nu de la vie: Récits des marais rwandais. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Hersh, Seymour M. 1970. My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and its Aftermath. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Hinton, Alexander Laban. 2005. Why Did They Kill? Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hirsch, James S. 2002. Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and its Legacy. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Donald L. 2001. The Deadly Ethnic Riot. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huggins, Martha K., Haritos-Fatouros, Mika, and Zimbardo, Philip G.. 2002. Violence Workers: Police Torturers and Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ifill, Sherrilyn A. 2007. On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-First Century. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Jolley, Levi. 1933. “Child is Killed as Mob Seeks Prey to Lynch.” Afro-American, 3.Google Scholar
Juergensmeyer, Mark. 2000. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kabagema, Edouard. 2001. Carnage d'une nation. Paris: L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 1999. “Wanton and Senseless? The Logic of Massacres in Algeria.” Rationality and Society 11(3): 243–85.Google Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2003. “The Ontology of ‘Political Violence’: Action and Identity in Civil Wars.” Perspectives on Politics 1(3): 475–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2012. “Micro-Level Studies of Violence in Civil War: Refining and Extending the Control-Collaboration Model.” Terrorism and Political Violence 24: 658–68.Google Scholar
Kapferer, Bruce. 1988. Legends of People, Myths of State: Violence, Intolerance, and Political Culture in Sri Lanka and Australia. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Kheng, Cheah Boon. 1980. “The Social Impact of the Japanese Occupation of Malaya (1942–1945).” In Southeast Asia Under Japanese Occuption, ed. McCoy, A. W.. New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies.Google Scholar
Kheng, Cheah Boon. 2003. Red Star Over Malaya: Resistance and Social Conflict During and After the Japanese Occupation, 1941–1946. 3rd ed. Singapore: Singapore University Press.Google Scholar
King, Desmond. 1998. “The Politics of Social Research: Institutionalizing Public Funding Regimes in the United States and Britain.” British Journal of Political Science 28: 415–44.Google Scholar
Klusemann, Stefan. 2010. “Micro-Situational Antecedents of Violent Atrocity.” Sociological Forum 25(2): 272–95.Google Scholar
Lacina, Bethany. 2006. “Explaining the Severity of Civil Wars.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50(2): 276–89.Google Scholar
Landesman, Peter. 2002. “A Woman's Work.” The New York Times Magazine, 15 September, 82–134.Google Scholar
Mann, Michael. 2005. The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug, Tarrow, Sidney, and Tilly, Charles. 2001. Dynamics of Contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McCall, Nathan. 1995. Makes Me Wanna Holler. New York: Vintage Press.Google Scholar
McGovern, James R. 1982. Anatomy of a Lynching: The Killing of Claude Neal. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
McGreal, Chris. 2010. “US Soldiers ‘Killed Afghan Civilians for Sport and Collected Fingers as Trophies’.” In The Guardian. London.Google Scholar
Merelman, Richard M. 1969. “The Dramaturgy of Politics.” Sociological Quarterly 10(2): 216–39.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Clarence. 1933. “Mob Members Knew Prey was Feeble-Minded.” Afro-American, 1.Google Scholar
Mueller, John. 2000. “The Banality of “Ethnic War”.” International Security 25(1): 42–70.Google Scholar
Neuffer, Elizabeth. 2001. The Key to my Neighbor's House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Olson, James S., and Roberts, Randy. 1998. My Lai: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford Books.Google Scholar
Payne, Leigh. 2008. Unsettling Accounts. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Pfeifer, Michael J. 2004. Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society 1874–1947. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Player, William O. 1933. “Capt. Johnson, of State Police, and Eight Others Hurt Defending Prisoner.” Baltimore Sun, 19 October.Google Scholar
Prunier, Gérard. 1995. The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Richards, Paul. 1996. Fighting for the Rain Forest. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Rudwick, Elliott. 1964. Race Riot at East St. Louis: July 2, 1917. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Sanday, Peggy Reeves. 2007. Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Fraser. 2008. Here Lies Jim Crow: Civil Rights in Maryland. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Snyder, Timothy. 2010. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Spencer, Frank. 1933. “Robins and Daugherty Told Armwood Would be Lynched.” Afro-American, 1.Google Scholar
Staniland, Paul. 2012. “States, Insurgents, and Wartime Political Orders.” Perspectives on Politics 10(2): 243–64.Google Scholar
Straus, Scott. 2006. The Order of Genocide: Race, Power and War in Rwanda. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Straus, Scott. 2012. “Retreating From the Brink: Theorizing Mass Violence and the Dynamics of Restraint.” Perspectives on Politics 10(2): 343–62.Google Scholar
“Supplemental Statements of Members of Maryland State Police.” 1933. ed. Transcript from notes of Charles I. Kratz, Official Shorthand Reporter. Baltimore: Offices of Attorney General.Google Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney. 1998. Power in Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael T. 1986. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study of Terror and Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Diana. 1997. Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's “Dirty War”. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Theidon, Kimberly. 2007. “Gender in Transition: Common Sense, Women, and War.” Journal of Human Rights 6(4): 453–78.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles. 2008. Contentious Performances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tolnay, Stewart E., and Beck, E.M.. 1995. A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882–1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Turse, Nick. 2008. “A My Lai a Month.” In The Nation.Google Scholar
Valentino, Benjamin A. 2004. Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Verdeja, Ernesto. 2012. “The Political Science of Genocide: Outlines of an Emerging Research Agenda.” Perspectives on Politics 10(2): 307–21.Google Scholar
Verkaaik, Oskar. 2003. “Fun and Violence: Ethnocide and the Effervescence of Collective Aggression.” Social Anthropology 11(1): 3–22.Google Scholar
Wagner, Michelle D. 1998. “All the Bourgmestre's Men.” Africa Today 45: 25–36.Google Scholar
Wedeen, Lisa. 2008. Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Weingartner, James J. 1992. “Trophies of War: US Troops and the Mutilation of Japanese War Dead, 1941–45.” Pacific Historical Review 61(1): 53–67.Google Scholar
Weinstein, Jeremy M. 2007. Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wennersten, John R. 1992. Maryland's Eastern Shore: A Journey in Time and Place. Centreville, MD: Tidewater Publishers.Google Scholar
Wood, Amy Louise. 2009a. Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890–1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Elisabeth Jean. 2006. “Variation in Sexual Violence.” Politics and Society 34(3): 307–41.Google Scholar
Wood, Elisabeth Jean. 2009b. “Armed Groups and Sexual Violence: When is Wartime Rape Rare?” Politics & Society 37(1): 131–62.Google Scholar
Zucchino, David. 2012. “US Troops Posed with Body Parts of Afghan Bombers.” In The Los Angeles Times.Google Scholar