SynTalk

Are you angry? Do we have a terrible love of war? Is it possible to think of violence without the teleological means-end schema? Why don’t we have a phenomenology for it? Is it because violence is the ground shared by enemies? Why don’t we manage to look inside ourselves for the source of violence, and often project it on to the Other? Why do even the worst of perpetrators represent themselves as being the victim? Does violence lie at the end of speech? Is today’s victim tomorrow’s offender? Do shame and humiliation turn us towards violence? What then is the agenda of punishment? How can we open up the victim’s silence? How can we access the scene of violence? Is the aggressive drive essential to human survival? Why do the under-trials expect the Judge to at least hear them out? Is hatred a revolutionary sentiment? Does militarism (love for war?) run across modes of production? Is crime (merely) an act by which one runs the ‘risk’ of taking punishment? What is the future of the act of policing? What is the distinction between violence and brutality? If violence becomes increasingly non profitable in the future, might society then need to invent violence for ethical reasons? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions, about the nature of violence, using concepts from criminology & justice (Prof. Vijay Raghavan, TISS, Mumbai), philosophy (Prof. Sanil V., IIT Delhi, New Delhi), and history (Dr. Dilip Simeon, ex-University of Delhi, New Delhi). Listen in....