Violence and civilité: The ambivalences of the state

Abstract

This chapter questions some ambivalences in Norbert Elias’s work about the role of the modern state regarding civilité and violence. The authors first discuss Elias’s analysis of the state as a first-rank reducer of social violence, mainly present in On the Process of Civilisation. Secondly they show that this interpretation is partly challenged by Elias himself, especially in some later essays. Elias not only acknowledges that the pacification inside states entailed an increase in violence between states. He also stresses the reversible character of some aspects of the civilizing process. His analysis of the Nazi barbarity, in particular, shows a near-collapse of “mutual identification”, which therefore cannot be regarded as a definitive outcome of a “progress”. The conclusion draws a more nuanced or balanced picture of the relationship between state building, civilité and violence. The state is not always the guardian of civil peace and security, as the state even radically threatens it under certain conditions; and civilité is neither the opposite of violence, nor an attribute of a bordered community.