vengeance, justice, or neither?

Question

Some anarchists focus on the concept of vengeance as an attempt to counter leftist appeals to justice. On the other hand, resorting to vengeance could quickly devolve into an ongoing series of tit-for-tat skirmishes. What are people's thoughts on this and on questions that come up around this?

Comments

I didn't include this as part of my answer because I couldn't figure out a way to work it in, but -- what's wrong with tit for tat skirmishes? Assuming you mean skirmishes with i.e. the state, it seems to me that a stable ongoing conflict is better than no conflict at all.. Or maybe you're suggesting that focusing on vengeance could ensure that the conflict doesn't escalate or generalize?

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I'm assuming they're referring to individual conflict resolution, as in between people, and not the state. Failing to achieve some sort of resolution in a dispute at that level seems to be something that most wouldn't like.

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I was just thinking in a general sense. I posed this question based on something elsewhere, and was just curious how people would respond. I don't necessarily think tit-for-tat skirmishes are always undesirable, whether against the state or in interpersonal or inter-group conflicts. On the other hand, the ability to walk away from things after brief flare ups is one of the differences I've often seen cited between moderr warfare and so-called "primitive warfare" (which is a problematic term in its' own right.

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This is a very interesting topic!

There's a really good part of A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari called  Nomadology: The War Machine which discusses how certain groups practice a style of warfare where there is ongoing but infrequent violence between groups that is mainly designed to keep the groups in motion and prevent ongoing trade relations from developing, thus warding off the development of the state. If you are interested in this kind of thing I also really recommend reading the political anthropologist Pierre Clastres.

As for the issue of individual conflict resolution, I don't know very much about it but I believe that most notions of blood debt are designed to provide a way for conflicts to be honorably wound down and ended, for instance by requiring a goat to change hands or something (although it doesn't always work!) ... it definitely seems like the American anarchist movement doesn't have any sort of culture of manners/honor or whatever to deal with this problem yet...

Answer 1

i would say vengeance over justice for sure, but sometimes not vengeance either.
the terminology around vengeance is helpful for folks who are re-connecting with their/our rage, i think, and the fact that it is explicit about being placed in time and in relationships is a Good Thing (especially as opposed to the ahistorical, existing-in-a-vacuum "justice").
obviously it is easy to make vengeance into a ressentiment, entirely reactive uhhh... reaction (sorry), depending on what level of thing one is seeking vengeance for, and what kind of vengeance one is seeking... but context will always be important.

Comments

Reactive reaction! After my heart, you are,  dot!

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hearts! yum! ;)

Answer 2

I would actually say justice, although my understanding of that term is probably different from that of most leftists.

In Remnants of Auschwitz, Agamben says that law is not directed toward the establishment of justice, nor is it directed toward the verification of truth. Law is solely directed toward judgment, independent of truth and justice. According to Agamben, punishment is only important in that it is a fulfillment of the judgement already pronounced.

The widespread use of the term justice to refer to the outcome of juridical proceedings is simply an indication that people believe in a secular ethics which totally confuses justice and judgement.

However, I don't think it is possible to bring about justice simply by skipping (or pretending to skip) over judgment and immediately meting out punishments (i.e. vengeance.) It seems to me that the concept of vengeance is almost inevitably a kind of mirror image of state judgement-punishment, differing only in that the question of judgment is hidden from view. I would say that a person enacting vengeance probably always passes judgement on the person they attack-- they just haven't given them a trial.

For me the nice thing about the notion of justice is actually its "ahistorical existing in a vacuum" status, as dot put it.  This means that we can work out what it would mean to achieve justice not only in the sense that the state pretends to offer it or in merely parallel senses (such as attacking individual neo-nazis, or rapists, or politicians (not that doing those things is a bad idea per se)) but potentially in a much broader sense.

For me, a useful notion of justice would have to go beyond the simplistic ascription of guilt or innocence to individual people, and would show clearly that neither law nor vengeance can resolve our biggest problems.