The Gift and Violence

Abstract

Both ancient and contemporary discussions about the nature of desire and ontology (and the relationship between the two) have been driven by economic concerns. Both the relationship between God and the world and that between the individual and the world have been conceived as economic problems, as have the questions of freedom, evil, creation, and teleology. The centrality of the economic question to the discussion of ontology and desire is particularly apparent in the debates that have taken place around the nature of “the gift.” This chapter explores the debates between Jacques Derrida and Jean Luc Marion over the nature of the gift and examines Slavoj Žižek’s relationship to these debates. It goes on to explore the theme of violence, which—as I argue—is a key term in Žižek’s work for the economic problem of the gift, and offers a reading of Žižek’s understanding of violence in relation to Walter Benjamin’s Critique of Violence.