Violence and Neo-constitutionalism: A Comment on Breny Mendoza’s Text

Abstract

In his work on civil wars Stathis Kalyvas (2006) argues persuasively that the violence of civil wars combines aggression against a political enemy with violence that is nurtured under much more familiar circumstances. Many acts can be explained by greed, envy, revenge, lust, family hatreds and the other petty reasons that make humans so endlessly creative in their betrayal and hatred. Wars are also, of course, rife with all the selflessness and heroism that we can muster, as well as with meaningless tasks, and endless waiting, and ordinary acts of survival. In many ways a civil war is also ordinary life; eating, sleeping, raising children, dying and surviving. But what is perhaps more remarkable is how war adds unsuspected possibilities to ordinary human frailness: the possibility of bringing to violence the passions we usually keep in check. Coveting a neighbor’s land, being betrayed by a friend, losing a lover, a long standing family feud, now take on the form of untethered partisan violence.