In this paper, the author seeks to approach contemporary violence in its most different expressions, including the use of the most recent developments in biology, bacteriology, chemistry and nuclear physics. The central idea is that violence changes, and with it the way it is perceived and how we react to it. The text, besides putting violence into a historical context, analyzes 1) the big transformation(s) in the world: the end of the cold war, the new industrial structure and its consequences for the decline of the labor movement, globalization and the new forms of victimization; 2) in the second part, the author points to new approaches and characterizes novel contemporary subjects.
Violence in history; Violence and subjectivity; Violence in our times; Violence and globalization