General Introduction: Theorizing Violence in the Twenty-first Century

What is violence, and how is it calculated? September 11, 2001 has become the milestone of violence for the twenty-first century and for American citizens. On that day four U.S. commercial airliners were hijacked and transformed into weapons of mass destruction. One plane hit the Pentagon, destroying part of a major annex and exacting a high death toll. One plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, killing all on board. But the deadliest two planes were guided into the World Trade Center towers, major monuments of U.S. financial prowess located in New York City; both towers collapsed, and the lives of thousands were lost. But how many thousands died? One day after the attack the U.S. media reported that 7,000 lives had been lost in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The final count, tallied less than four months later, was 2,893. Airplane wrecks can lead to indirect as well as direct carnage. In April 1994, following a plane crash that killed both the president of Burundi and the president of Rwanda, rumors abounded about the cause. Some suspected that the plane had been shot down due to ethnic rivalries and desires for vengeance. Riots flared in Rwanda. The estimated number of Tutsi and Hutu killed varied between 10,000 and 200,000! But, indisputably, the greater number of those killed were Hutu, so much so that the violence in Central Africa is now called Hutu genocide, albeit, outside of Rwanda, a faceless and nameless genocide.∞ Not so the death of Amy Biehl. In August 1993 in South Africa, Biehl was dragged from her car in a black township near Capetown and beaten to death by three shantytown black youth. Her murder shocked. It, and the trial that followed, drew extensive media attention. Many black deaths also took place during 1993–1994, yet they ‘‘continued to be reported unceremoniously in South African newspapers as mere body counts, a persistent residue of the apartheid years. White deaths ‘count’—the victims have names, personalities, histories and grieving family members.’’ Black deaths do not, with ‘‘African murder victims . . . normally reported as ‘faceless, unidentified bodies.’ ’’≤ Whether the goal is to count victims of violence or to represent them, the lesson is the same: context matters. Violence always has a context. Context shapes not just the actors or victims but also those who represent them. What is celebrated in one place may be mourned in another. Memory is never an equal balance, or a neutral lens, of human experience and history. What may be remembered and highlighted in New York may seem unimportant, even incon-