War Lecture Response

        In the first class, the discussion in which we defined war to be the violent declaration of conflict between two actors (state/non-state) made me think perhaps for the first time about the odd concept of what I consider to be acts of war or terrorism. Professor Cavarero’s lecture brought to my attention yet again the issue of what political philosophy and colloquial usage has come to define war/terrorism. It is undoubtedly true that over the past 100 years or so, the global violence scene has changed tremendously. Professor Cavarero has identified this decisive change as one moving away from the traditional definition of war (one that provokes images of allies/enemies, state vs. state sanctioned actions, etc.) and moving toward the less conventional description (provoking images of unitary violence toward innocent peoples in mass and at random).

        This first transformation or shift is one that is more commonly discussed and perhaps more easily understood. However, also involved in Professor Cavarero’s lecture was the shift that is required (and has not yet been achieved) in the observer’s perspective from being one entirely oriented around what she terms the “warriors point of view” to one that is more concerned with the point of view of those people struck in mass and at random who are helpless and vulnerable. She argues that the circumstances of these people and not those of the traditional wartime protagonist should orientate our perspective and terms this new orientation “horrorism.”

        The one explanation of the difference that horrorism proposes that, to me, was the most revealing of Cavarero’s direction was trying to understand that the victim of violence does not care whether it was a state/non-state actor, an act of war or an act of randomness, they just care about the horror it inflicted.