Violence and Interpretation: Conflicts of Values and Violation in Maxwell Kennel’s Ontologies of Violence

Although violence is a commonly used concept in the scholarly and public spheres, its definition shifts profoundly with the value-laden politically-saturated boundaries of its users and critics. Violence is never a neutral concept, and it is most often used to name and condemn violations across the spectrum from the physical and corporeal, to the symbolic and linguistic. Beyond its conceptual range, violence also serves as a convenient polemical term that is radically open to both careful uses and disquieting abuses. In his 2023 book _Ontologies of Violence_, Maxwell Kennel explores these problems through detailed and comparative interpretations of the works of Jacques Derrida, Mennonite pacifists, and Grace Jantzen – all in order to reframe violence as a diagnostic concept that reflects the values of its users, but cannot be abandoned to relativity. This panel discusses, critiques, and extends this paradigm with contributions from scholars of anthropology, race, critical theory, and decoloniality.