NORMALITY OF VIOLENCE AND THE IMAGE OF A SOCIETY

Abstract

lmage of violence are often perceived as brutal and atrocious, whether qualitatively . This study aims at the understanding of a radically different or image of violence which is manifested as being normal or as parts of normality. This image of violence is perceived neither as apparently atrocious, brutally vicious nor as inflicted by a perpetrator. This kind of violence is concealed under the veil of the state of normality and ordinariness, which is masqueraded as unavoidable in the cycle of. Life, as parts of social mechanisms, as morally justified, licit, politically correct, organizationally rational, sensible, harmonious or even pleasingly sentimental. The notion of violence, which is masqueraded as normal and ordinary is a paradoxical one. It is thus difficult to identify or to be recognized as violence, perceived as vile and atrocious. This kind of violence is deceptively normal because of its complexities by rhetorically employing vocabularies or elements usually associated as being normal and ordinary, or by recycling the language usually recognized as morally and socially positive. This study argues for the understanding of the paradoxical image of the extremity of violence and the ordinariness of everyday life in the haze and ambivalence of the socio-political circumstances of present-day Thailand. The paradox of the normal and the extreme derives from attempts to understand the mechanisms of totalitarian regimes and to make sense of life under such conditions, particularly from the area of holocaust studies. This study concerns the notion through the aspects of sociology, historical studies, modern literature and philosophy from the works of Hannah Arendt, Zygmunt Bauman, Saul Fried lander and Giorgio Agamben.