Introduction: The Violent Performativities of Youth

Abstract

Youth has a history of association with violent behaviour. Young people are routinely represented in media and politics as a violent group. Schoolyard bullying, youth gangs, child abuse, deviant sexualised behaviour and violent protest are regularly the subject of moral panics internationally and with each new generation. In this book, I examine how narrow frames of reference for conceptualising violence and youth have obscured the complexities inherent in young people’s enactment and resistance to violence. I argue that young people adopt violent performativities as a result of subjugation to a complex system of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ violence. The highly visible physical violence that regularly captures public attention has a clear ‘subject’, whereas ‘objective’ violence is hidden and embedded in social systems and society that are often assumed to violence-free. The young people’s stories in this book offer counter-narratives in which they reject the assumed violence-free nature of contemporary society and resist the violent performativities available to them as they seek to embody alternatives.