3

Institutional violence

Systemic violence, as we have seen in the previous chapter, is lawful although its
outcomes are harmful and at times lethal. Institutional violence, instead, contains
an insatiable core leading to harmful and lethal activity that transcends what is
allowed by the laws.
Economic and political institutions are major sources of harm, injury and
violence which exceed the systemic damage caused by the routine running of
states and markets. Institutional violence, therefore, is the outcome of violations
perpetrated by individuals and groups against their own official principles and
philosophies, those principles and philosophies which allow them to hold
positions of privilege. State agents violating their own written norms who engage
in abuse, torture, and killing are cases in point. Organizations that violate their
officially stated principles include enterprises standing up for market freedom
while in practice showing little credence in such freedom. Price-fixing and other
forms of unfair competition are examples, which are commonly enacted through
corruption or intimidation, but may also be supported by violence. Firms causing
death and lethal diseases, in their turn, violate health and safety regulations or
infringe norms for the protection of the environment (Tombs, 2018).
Institutional violence may trigger a lawmaking mechanism: torture, military
invasion, kidnapping of suspects, and the use of prohibited weapons create
important precedents and, undetected, tolerated and unprosecuted, re-write the
international law and re-found the principles of justice. This violence is, we may
suggest, foundational, as it is capable of transforming the previous jurisprudence
and of establishing new laws and new types of legitimacy. Institutional violence
is the result of the ‘blunted moral sensitivity’ (Wright Mills, 1956) adopted in
response to contrived crisis and emergencies. For instance, violence can be
triggered by imagined threats, followed by a shifting of the balance between
security and human and civil rights, leading the authorities to violate their own
laws.
It is not always easy to separate institutional violence perpetrated by economic
actors from that inflicted by state actors, as the notion of state-corporate crime
may well illustrate (see previous chapter). However, an initial distinction
between the two may be useful exactly for this reason, as it allows to identify
their respective specific traits and then to observe how they blur and merge.

Foxes and lions

The illegality of firms and corporations can be viewed as an attempt to neutralize

or temper the decline they experience (or simply fear) in respect of their profits.
Violence, in the economic sphere, can be a means available to foxes as well as to
lions, two categories of entrepreneurs described by Pareto (1935; 1966),
respectively, as the short-term opportunists who combine diverse interests and
adopt cunning strategies, and those who are bound in persistent aggregations
and pursue long-term goals (Harrington, 2005).

1
When work kills

The International Labour Organization estimated that in 2004 some 6,000

people a day were killed by work (2.1 million per year). Almost 270 million
accidents were recorded that year, of which 350,000 were fatal. Twenty years
after one of the worst industrial accidents on record – the Bhopal disaster – the
situation had scarcely improved. Occupational deaths occurred during work
accidents but were also due to work-related illnesses. Exposure to chemicals was
one of the major causes, as it was responsible for 35 million of the 160 million
cases of work-related diseases recorded worldwide. Every year, it was also
mentioned, an estimated 22,000 children of school age died at work. About 80
per cent of these occupational deaths could have been prevented if the strategies
and practices legally available had been put in place. In other words, if the official
norms regulating health and safety at work had been respected (ILO, 2004).
A decade on, firms and corporations with poor health and safety records not
only survived, but acted as bad examples for other companies to relax or ignore
their own safety efforts. This is what a report issued in 2014 revealed, namely
that an estimated 2.3 million workers were now dying every year from
occupational accidents and work-related diseases. It was also noted that the grey
area of unreported or ignored fatalities was constantly growing, and that cutting
back on occupational health and safety was particularly tempting during periods
of economic downturn (ILO, 2014). A similar report released in 2018 recorded
around 2.7 million deaths for the previous year and 374 million non-fatal
injuries and illnesses (ILO, 2018).
Deaths caused by this form of institutional violence are five times those caused
by recorded homicides across the world (Whyte, 2014). The norms being
violated are not only those regulating specific work conditions, but also those
concerning the emissions of hazardous substances. Pollution, therefore, kills
those at work as well as those out of work (Tombs and Whyte, 2015).

‘Although no company director sets out in the morning to intentionally

kill workers or consumers, company directors do very often set out in the
morning to make decisions that cut margins, intensify production
conditions, cut back on working conditions, or allow unsafe products to
be sold. The violence that results directly from management decisions is
more commonly “pre-meditated” or “cold-blooded” than many forms of
inter-personal violence’ (Whyte, 2014: 5).

With regulatory controls shrinking on a global level, other forms of violence

emerge, like the routine violence against women and men inflicted by
supervisors and managers, which particularly affects the most marginalized
workers. Women are disproportionately affected where unequal power
relations, low pay, non-standard working conditions and other workplace abuses
expose them to violence and harassment (Pillinger, 2017).
Lack of regulatory controls or violations of work legislation can also produce
other types of death, as shown in the following case.

Karoshi and Karojisatsu

2
In Japan, the term karoshi designates death from overwork, and has been used
since the 1970s. It is a socio-medical term that refers to fatalities or disabilities
provoked by cardiovascular attacks and associated with heavy workloads. The
phenomenon is now identified internationally (Weller, 2017). Some case studies
selected from research conducted in Japan provide the following details:

- Mr A worked at a major snack food processing company for as long as 110

hours a week and died from heart attack at the age of 34. His death was
described as work-related by the Labour Standards Office.
- Mr B, a bus driver, whose death was also described as work-related,
worked more than 3,000 hours a year. He did not have a day off in the 15
days before he had stroke at the age of 37.
- Mr C worked in a large printing company in Tokyo for 4,320 hours a year
including night work, and died from stroke at the age of 58. His widow
received a workers’ compensation 14 years after her husband’s death.
- Ms D, a 22 year-old nurse, died from a heart attack after 34 hours’
continuous duty five times a month.

Karojisatsu designates suicide from overwork and stressful working conditions

and has also become a social issue in Japan since the latter half of the 1980s.
Long work hours, heavy workloads, lack of job control, routine and repetitive
tasks, interpersonal conflicts, inadequate rewards, employment insecurity, and
organizational problems become psychosocial hazards at work.
Some causes of overwork or occupational stress include the following:

- All-night, late-night or holiday work, both long and excessive hours.

During the long-term economic recession after the collapse of the bubble
economy in 1980s and 1990s, many companies reduced the number of
employees. The total amount of work, however, did not decrease, forcing
each employee to work harder.
- Stress accumulated due to frustration at inability to achieve the goals set
by the company. Even in economic recession, companies tend to demand
excessive sales efforts from their employees and require them to achieve
better results. This increases the psychological burden placed on the
employees at work.
- Forced resignation, dismissal and bullying. For example, employees who
have worked for a company for many years and believe that they are loyal
to the company, were suddenly asked to resign because of the need for
staff cutbacks.
- Suffering of middle management. Managers were often in a position to lay
off workers and struggled with the dilemma between the corporate
restructuring policy and protecting their staff. These middle managers
responsible for persuading workers to resign had to bear fierce protests
from the targeted workers, suffered from emotional pain, and finally
committed suicide.

There has been an increase in insurance compensation for death caused by

overwork. Between 1997 and 2011, compensated cases of Karoshi and

3
Karojisatsu have risen from 47 to 121 and from 2 to 66, respectively (Ministry of
Health, Labour and Welfare, 2011).
Whether economic actors exerting this type of violence can be assimilated to
foxes or to lions is not easy to establish, as in many cases the short-term
opportunists who combine diverse interests and adopt cunning strategies may
be rewarded with long-term attainments. In other words, economic initiative can
turn foxes into lions, namely contingent, short-term, success into persistent and
stable achievement. Once introduced, certain ‘innovative’ violations are often
translated into routine practice, as will also be clear later, when the political
sphere will be addressed. What is worthwhile now is drawing a tentative
theoretical framework for the interpretation of such violations.

Power and crime

Power entails the ability to act and overcome the obstacles erected by those who
are subject to it. It also entails the capacity to make one’s crimes acceptable,
while formulating criminal imputations against others.
The examples of institutional violence offered above may find explanatory tools
in a variety of socio-criminological contributions. For instance, against the
background of anomie theory, violence can be deemed one of the numerous
instruments available to the elites, who operate in already normless contexts and
are, therefore, encouraged to experiment with conducts and arbitrarily expand
on practices. Conflict theory would postulate that all violent manifestations in
social systems are to be interpreted as the outcome of the polarization of power
and resources, and that successful imputations of violent conduct are normally
the prerogative of powerful groups who so label the conduct adopted by the
powerless. Institutional violence, on the other hand, can be the object of analysis
focusing on micro-sociological aspects, more particularly, on the observation of
the dynamics that guide the behaviour of organisations and their members. As
organisations become more complex, it is maintained, responsibilities are
decentralized, while their human components find themselves inhabiting an
increasingly opaque environment in which the goals to pursue and the
modalities through which one is expected to pursue them become vague and
negotiable. Violence perpetrated by organizations can be regarded as an
outcome of such opacity and vagueness (Ruggiero, 2015a).
Economic agents may be led to violence by their inherent nature as homo
duplex, with which Durkheim (1960) designates the co-presence of violence and
sociability in social actors. Or simply because they inhabit contexts such as
markets, seen by Weber as substantially irrational and inspirers of speculation,
gambling and bullying. Merton’s (1969) notion of ‘winning’ rather than ‘wining
according to the rules’ provides yet a supplementary viewpoint. What these
explanations have in common is a sense that violence is a key intentional
manifestation of power, echoing the formulation of Bertrand Russell (1975), for
whom power is the production of intended effects. The element of intention or
‘will’ is also stressed by Max Weber (1978: 943), who defines power as ‘the
probability that an actor in a social relationship will be in a position to carry out
his own will despite resistance’. We have here two key components of power: the
capacity to perform purposive action, on the one hand, and the ability to
overcome obstacles, on the other.

4
 The capacity to produce intended effects is what distinguishes powerful from
powerless individuals and groups, with the former being granted a wide range of
choices amongst the actions that can be carried out (Bauman, 1990). Power, in
this sense, derives from the number and diversity of options available and the
ability to predict their outcomes. In making choices and acting, however, the
powerful may turn the actions performed by others into means for their own
goals, and this can be realized through coercion or legitimacy.
It is inevitable, at this point, to address the Marxist analysis of ideology. As
discussed in the previous chapter, the notion of politics in the Marxist tradition
belongs to the realm of the superstructure. It is a corollary of the material world
which provides the core foundation to a social system (Marx, 1976a; 1976b).
Institutional violence, from this perspective, appears to be one of the outcomes
of the constant and growing interest of powerful economic actors in
perpetuating exploitation and social inequality. The ideology allowing them to do
so is nothing more than an artifact that neutralizes all imputations of criminality,
a set of beliefs which are transmitted to the sphere of the law and turned into
impunity. The powerful, in this sense, strive to escape processes of
stigmatization and labeling mechanisms, aiming to make their conducts formally
acceptable and legitimate. For this reason, scholars with a Marxist background
argue that an understanding of the crimes of the powerful can only be grasped if
research is prepared to look at harmful conducts irrespective of whether or not
they are formally criminalized.
We have also seen in the previous chapter how the concept of ideology is
questioned because those invoking and formulating it appear to oppose it to the
idea of truth or science (Lloyd, 2014). The base-superstructure model posited by
the Marxist vulgate, in other words, is critiqued for drawing too neat a line
between a ‘true’ material world, scientifically observable, and an imaginary
world replete with ‘falsity’. It could be argued, instead, that often truth is created
and reinforced at the margin or periphery of society, where it is initially
conceived before being appropriated or utilized by different institutions or
organizations for different purposes (Foucault, 1970; 1972). The argument
below may clarify this point.
That the two components of power, coercion and legitimacy, are intimately
connected is clear in Max Weber’s (1978) argument that domination may be
established by virtue of ‘a constellation of interests’ and by virtue of ‘authority’.
The former falls in the economic domain and derives from the possession of
resources and marketable goods: this type of domination determines the conduct
of those devoid of possessions, who nevertheless remain formally free and
motivated simply by the pursuit of their reproduction. Monopolies, it is implied,
are the extreme forms of this type of domination. The latter type is exemplified
by patriarchal, magisterial or princely power, therefore, it ‘rests upon the alleged
absolute duty to obey, regardless of personal merit or interests’ (Lukes, 1986:
30). Domination by virtue of constellation of interests, as Weber postulates, often
turns into domination by authority, as material possessions are transformed into
duty to obey on the part of the dispossessed.
Structures of dominancy are constituted through norms that acquire
hegemony thanks to customary social practice. A dynamic of this process is
clearly described by John Dewey (1909: 4) in his analysis of ‘how we think’.
Thoughts, he argues, grow up unconsciously and ‘without reference to the

5
attainment or correct belief’.

‘From obscure sources and by unnoticed channels they insinuate

themselves into acceptance and become unconsciously a part of our
mental furniture. Tradition, instruction, and imitation are responsible for
them’ (ibid).

But such thoughts, Dewey specifies, are prejudices, that is, prejudgments, not
judgments proper that rest upon a survey of evidence. In a Weberian sense, it is
not only thoughts, but every sphere of social order that is profoundly influenced
by structures of dominancy. These structures are taken for granted, although, at
times unobtrusively, they privilege certain specific ideas and interests. We can
also term these thoughts and structures as ‘meaning systems’, historical a priori
that help people make sense of their world.
Powerful economic actors delivering institutional violence, though violating
the law, must provide reasons for their conduct to be accepted. In order to do so,
they have to stress the minimal formula whereby unlimited accumulation of
wealth is an economic imperative, they have to claim that profits are under
constant threat and that competition causes incessant anxiety. A moral
relationship between human beings and their work must be established so that
one’s paid activity turns into a “calling”, while the pursuit of profit has to be
depicted as an innocuous passion that prevents other more destructive passions
(Hirschman, 1977). Reasons for the acceptance of institutional violence may be
of an individual nature or refer to the common good. However, in an effort to
include both dimensions, the term justification has been used, which entails
individuals finding grounds for engaging in the economic sphere, on the one
hand, and groups appreciating that economic activity serves the common good,
on the other (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2018).
Deaths provoked by work, in this way, will not undermine the notion that the
dominant economic system is the best possible and this notion will have to be
supported by arguments that are sufficiently strong to be accepted as self-
evident. Research has attempted to identify the factors that influence the
perception of corporate violence, assessing the role of the following variables:
support for the market philosophy, level of nationalistic feelings, socio-
demographic characteristics and attitudes towards known violence cases.
Findings show that individuals who support market philosophies and score high
on the nationalism scale are less likely to rate corporate violence as serious and
more inclined to condone harmful business conduct (Michel, 2017). The denial of
inconvenient truths that might damage business and adherence to myths around
its social mission mirror the general, relative unwillingness to prosecute violent
corporate crime. We have entered the realm of consensus and hegemony.
In Gramsci’s surprisingly enduring analysis, consensus and hegemony are
closely related to the point of almost overlapping. Supremacy of a social group,
as we have seen, manifests itself through coercion and consensus. Put differently,
it springs from domination and from intellectual and moral leadership (Gramsci,
1971). Domination aims at subjugating, or even liquidating rival groups.
However, it is leadership that allows the exercise of power, as moral and
intellectual values are widely spread, shared and ultimately internalized even
before power itself can be exercised. Conflicts between social groups result in the

6
victory of the party which ‘captures’ the mind and the political sensibility of the
enemies, thus absorbing them in a hegemonic culture. Some groups, according to
Gramsci : ‘for reasons of submission and intellectual subordination, adopt a
conception of the world which is not their own but is borrowed from another
group’ (ibid: 327).
In the domain of economic life, at issue is the idea of economic thought as non-
ideological but irrefutably scientific, whose perpetuation must rely on support
or, at least, on silent consensus. Let us examine how support and consensus may
be built.
‘Freedom’ in labour markets consists of the encounter between those who use
others as means to their ends and those who allow themselves to be used in that
manner. ‘The superb meeting point of these two freedoms is called employment’
(Lordon, 2014: ix). This coerced freedom implies a form of capture, which
consists of getting individuals act on behalf of the capturer while closing down
other avenues of their reproduction. In a formula indebted to Marxist analysis:

‘If the primary meaning of domination consists in one agent’s having to

pass through another to access the object of desire, then evidently the
employment relation is a relation of domination’ (ibid: 12).

Hegemony, in this realm, may be achieved through the dissociation of the figure
of the consumer from that of the employee, with the former becoming
predominant at the cost of life indebtedness. Domination through employment,
moreover, tends to increase with the relocation of business, whereby the
employees are forced to compete with colleagues scattered across the world who
accept lower salaries and therefore a lower level of consumerism. Such
competition generates uncertainty and fear, transforming the labour force into a
fluid mass to be forged and governed as a component of a portfolio, as a mere
asset at the disposal of investors. Consensus and hegemony thrive on threat,
which incorporates violence and, at the same time, on forms of social control that
seem to render violence unnecessary (Urry, 2014).
Institutional violence inflicted by work is only one type of such violence, and
does not require, unlike the type we now turn to examine, direct physical contact
between the perpetrators and the victims.

Police violence

Police brutality is ubiquitous and, limiting our focus on some European

countries, mentioned below in alphabetical order, the following picture emerges.
In Austria, brutality is mainly triggered by racism and prejudice against foreign
nationals and ethnic minorities. Beatings and torture are perpetrated against
African migrants, who are regarded as the source of the drug problem in the
country. Hundreds of complaints by citizens and civic organizations are ignored
every year. Institutional violence is also inflicted on prisoners and psychiatric
patients (Amnesty International, 2016). In Belgium, an unprecedented escalation
of assaults by police were recorded between 2005 and 2015. In 2013, the Grand
Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights convicted the country for
human rights violations. An Observatory of Police Violence operates since 2013,

7
collecting testimonies and creating a safe space for victims of police brutality
(ObsPol, 2016).
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance has accused the
Croatian police of brutality against minority groups, particularly Roma people.
The police have also been charged with ill treatment of refugees travelling from
Serbia, including Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan nationals (ERRC, 2009). In France,
there have been a number of high profile cases of police brutality, as proven by
recurrent reports by the European Court of Human Rights. Violence mainly
targets minority groups, but also affects political protesters and activists. As a
result of the increased number of cases of police brutality, the Collective of
Stolen Lives has been created which represents families of those victimised
(Meziane, 2013). In Germany, incidents of police brutality, like elsewhere, are
caused by racism and xenophobic attitudes, and occur mainly during arrests and
in custody. Political protesters are also targeted. Every year, some 2,000
complaints are filed (DW, 2015).
Over the last few years, the level and severity of police brutality in Greece has
been particularly alarming. This appears to be the result of popular protest
against the austerity measures introduced in response to the financial crisis. The
police have been accused of making unjustified arrests, beating demonstrators
and torturing suspects. In 2015, fifteen anti-fascist protesters were arrested
during clashes with members of the extreme right party Golden Dawn. While in
police custody, the anti-fascists were beaten up, burnt with cigarette lighters and
kept awake by force. Two Greek journalists who reported the fact were fired.
In Hungary, the Roma minority is constantly discriminated against and often
victimized by police brutality. Political protesters are also hit, and during some
demonstrations the police have raided restaurants and bars while looking for
‘radicals’, beaten innocent by-passers, news reporters and paramedics
(Hungarian Spectrum, 2009). In the Republic of Ireland, the Garda acknowledged
that tragedies resulting from police use of force will continue to devastate
families and communities. Over the last ten years, The European Committee for
the Prevention of Torture has on three different occasions expressed concern
about police brutality and the Irish government has been forced to conduct a
review of the police force, introduce complaints procedures and whistle-blowing
protections. In Italy, excessive force is used by the police against migrants and
political activists of the left, and in some cases officers have been found guilty of
sexual violence. When such cases occur, an increase in the number of reported
rapes is noted, as if the police behaviour encouraged imitation (Pasha-Robinson,
2017). In the Netherlands, despite the widespread support for enlightened
values, the police force is not immune from brutal practices towards non
nationals. In a report published by Amnesty International in 2018, the police
were found to be led by stereotypes regarding the relationships between
criminal behaviour and specific ethnic characteristics (particularly of Moroccan
heritage). The report linked the growing police violence with the spread of right
wing ideologies around the inferiority of certain human races (Amnesty
International, 2018).
In Poland, police brutality targets the Roma community and suspects with a
view to gaining confessions. Police also use violence at sporting events (US
Department of State, 2008; Anonymous, 2015). Minorities are hit in Portugal too,
while in Russia due process to citizens is often denied, political opponents are

8
brutally treated and human rights campaigners have denounced several cases of
torture (Anonymous, 2010). In Spain, police brutality is visually documented,
pertaining particularly to political demonstrations. Images of violence against
Catalan separatists circulated the world over in 2017, but the government made
no effort to reform policing or establish complaint procedures. On the contrary,
new legislation on public security introduced severe limitations to the right of
assembly and expanded enforcement discretionary powers. Latin American
migrants are regularly targeted and the Committee for the Prevention of Torture
found that, between 2004 and 2014, over 6,600 people reported to having
suffered some form of torture at the hand of the police (Anonhq.com, 2015). In
Sweden, the introduction of new rules dealing with illegal migration (Legally
Certain and Efficient Enforcement) in 2013 led to the escalation of police
brutality. Non-white Swedes, the poor and the homeless now see the country as a
police state (Grobgeld, 2013).
The UK Independent Police Complaints Committee has published statistics
since 2004 and figures escalate every year: between 2004 and 2014 complaints
against the police went up by 62 percent. In the 2014-2015 period 17 deaths in
custody or following police detention were reported and one fatal police
shooting. Between 1990 and 2016, more than 140 people from black or other
minority ethnic groups died under police custody (IPCC, 2016). A report
published in 2018 showed an increase in complaints, in appeals and in
independent investigations into serious cases (IPCC, 2018).
Disposable bodies
Institutional violence, in the case of police brutality, expresses itself through the
exercise of fear. This type of violence indicates the particular ‘conatus’ of power
to grow indefinitely, unchallenged, through the violation of the laws that already
considerably guarantee the position of power of perpetrators. It could be argued
that, with institutional violence, democracy is suspended, as contingent critical
situations require the abandonment of constitutional niceties. In such situation,
states are said to become ‘exceptional’, to ‘intensify physical repression and
conduct an open war against the dominated classes or other subaltern or
marginal forces’ (Jessop, 2016: 212). On the other hand, such intensification may
well connote the permanent state of exception of democracies; the will to wage
an open war on the dominated is an entrenched feature of the modern state.
As stated at the beginning of this chapter, the institutional violence
perpetrated by economic actors and that inflicted by state actors may blur and
merge, as in the case below.

Defenders of the earth

In 2016, at least two hundred land and environmental defenders were

murdered, the deadliest year on record. This trend is growing but also spreading:
killings were dispersed across twenty-four countries, compared to sixteen in
2015. With many killings unreported, and often uninvestigated, it is likely that
the true number is far higher.

‘The tide of violence is driven by an intensifying fight for land and natural
resources, as mining, logging, hydro-electric and agricultural companies

9
 trample on people and the environment in their pursuit of profit’ (Global
Witness, 2017).

The harsh competition for the Amazon’s natural wealth makes Brazil the world’s
deadliest country in terms of the sheer numbers killed, though Honduras
remains the most dangerous country per capita over the past decade. Soon,
Nicaragua may rival that record, as an inter-oceanic canal is set to slice the
country in two, threating mass displacement. Meanwhile, a voracious mining
industry makes the Philippines stand out for killings of environmentalists in
Asia. In Colombia, killings rose despite, or perhaps because, of the peace deal
between the government and the guerrilla groups FARC. Areas previously under
the control of the groups are drawing extracting companies, and returning
residents are attacked for claiming the land stolen from them. Heavy-handed
policing, repression of environmentalists’ protest and killings are on the rise in
India, while in Africa defending national parks puts protesters’ lives at risk,
particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

‘It is increasingly clear that, globally, governments and companies are

failing in their duty to protect activists at risk. They are permitting a level
of impunity that allows the vast majority of perpetrators to walk free,
emboldening would-be assassins’ (ibid: 6).

This type of institutional violence infringes international law ratified by the

perpetrating countries. The law stipulates that all communities should be able to
make free and informed choices about how their land and natural resources are
used and developed. The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights
not only underscore the business and governmental duty to respect international
human rights law, but also reiterate the importance of meaningful consultation
with potentially affected groups.

‘Democratic’ missions

Institutional violence perpetrated within the domain of international relations is

accompanied by the celebration of democratic values. However, the invasions of,
and wars against, undemocratic enemies require that the very democratic
principles allegedly inspiring them be jettisoned. Such ‘democratic’ missions,
launched in the name of universalistic values, in fact place some humans outside
the universe of moral obligation. This notwithstanding, the word ‘war’ is
prohibited; in its place we have ‘peacekeeping operations’ or ‘protecting civilian
populations’. Soldiers are advised to present themselves as social workers.
The suggestion that this kind of institutional violence is motivated by the mere
pursuit of profit depicts only a partial picture. This violence transforms rules,
experiments with new procedures and, ultimately, acts as a legislative tool. A
new type of morality and legitimacy is established, precedents are created and
illegal conducts are decriminalized. The invasion of ‘evil’ countries, torture, the
use of prohibited weapons, extraordinary rendition and the like are examples of
non-monetary crimes that transform the international law by violating it.
Institutional violence demolishes the boundaries and channels of
communication constituted by laws, destroying the political possibilities of those

10
who are victimized. On the one hand, this violence encourages a ‘flight from the
world’, it creates ‘absent persons’ who turn away from collective concerns
(Sloterdijk, 2016). On the other hand, it produces particular subjects that can
legitimately be victimized. When institutional violence hits, the fundamental
capacity of the victims to be politically constituted is undermined: violating their
body means incapacitating their ability to make independent judgments. Life is
made precarious, human vulnerability is made evident and is compounded, while
spreading physical and political incapability becomes the goal of sovereign
power (Butler, 2004, 2009; Wilcox, 2015).
This type of political violence does not prevent life from becoming ‘nasty,
brutish and short’, it makes survival depend on the sovereign by denying its
victims the minimum vitality to engage in primary political associations.
Survival, here, is crucial, as institutional agents deploy their power to destroy life
and, at the same time, to rescue it. In torture, medical expertise is used to
minimize the death risk of those tortured: the victims have to remain healthy so
that they can be tortured.

‘The limits of torture, precluding the death of inmates and their force-
feeding, suggest that torture in this context operates under a logic that
prisoners can be harmed, but that their lives must also be forcibly
sustained by the state’ (Wilcox, 2015: 13).

Institutional violence, through ‘democratic’ missions, aims to maintain and

strengthen power relations, to produce human disability in a performative
process that makes that violence acceptable, even necessary. In this case,
institutional violence is not merely deterrent, but also constitutive, because it
forges a notion of enmity while marking increasingly drastic hierarchies.
Torture, in brief, produces disposable individuals, hierarchically identifiable,
subjects that can be tortured. Contemporary democracies may deny, or perhaps
rejoice, that some primary sadist elements characterizing them ensure their very
survival. Can we detect democracies behind the following literary ‘vision’ of
institutional violence?

The Marquis de Sade

‘Everything hinges upon the total annihilation of that absurd notion of fraternity.
Between your self and some other self no connection whatever exists’ (Sade,
2012: 58). This is what we read in Justine, a novel that proposes an inverted
version of Hobbes’ idea of social contract. The world is divided into predatory
heroes and passive victims, with the former allowed to choose the latter and, at
the same time, to stipulate collaboration contracts among themselves. In 120
Days of Sodom, a utopian community is depicted, a full-blown social order made
of authority, coercion and social stratification, and in the Philosophy in the
Bedroom that social order is energetically justified, as no universal value is said
to exist, neither in terms of social manners nor in the sense of moral convictions
(Sade, 1965). Sade would suggest that institutional violence, as discussed in this
chapter, is a form of primitive perversion applied to social structures, implying
the pleasure of ignoring socially imposed restraints and the thrill of law
violation. ‘Whatever laws and moral values one may recognize, whatever

11
decisions they prescribe, the greatest pleasure always results from the strict
violation of the law’ (ibid: 67). Were we born in a state of perpetual warfare?
Excellent! ‘Is it not the only state to which we are really adapted? All men are
born isolated, envious, cruel and despotic; wishing to have everything and
surrender nothing’ (ibid: 494). No Hobbesian social contact is necessary,
therefore, because the vulnerable lose everything to the powerful, who think
they deserve what they are able to grab. Sade believes that France approximates
the social state of nature described by Hobbes, as the country is perpetually
unjust and hides its violence behind fictional rules. The elite, as argued above,
disregards the very norms that it creates and that determine its domination. The
state of nature is, according to Sade, not a world located in distant times and
places, but it is the hell we experience in our societies. This hell, moreover,
educates the powerful to perfect their savage skills and predatory plans. It is
what happens in Silling, the isolated castle of 120 Days of Sodoma (Sade, 2015)
but also in Sodality, where the monks impart lessons and teach principles to
Justine and other kidnapped girls, and as a result, one of them is named the
General of the Benedictine Order of His Holiness. Simone de Beauvoir (1955)
contends that Sade is shocked by homicide committed in the name of virtue and
that he recoils in horror when universal laws authorize institutions to become
criminals. When killing becomes constitutional, we are shown the disgusting
effects that abstract principles can generate. Sade demolishes the notions of
humanity and benevolence, because he sees nobody practicing them: ‘they are
myths that aim at reconciling that which is not reconcilable, namely the
unfulfilled appetites of the poor and the insatiable greed of the rich’ (ibid: 48).

Systemic violence, addressed in the previous chapter, feeds on and is fed by

institutional violence, as the harm inflicted by the latter will result in novel social
and political arrangements (and sharper inequality) which will, in turn, prove
more harmful. The two types of violence augment each other’s lethal strength.
Both, however, can and are often challenged, as the following chapter will
discuss.

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