We are all subjects of violence, and a person unaffected by violence, whether it is in the form of silence, art, ritual, or brute force, is merely an abstraction.
Literature
The novel is humanistic in its acceptance of dark, negative, and evil aspects of the human imagination, but nevertheless warns that those dark energies exhaust themselves; therefore, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a map of a restricted area.
By situating the film’s protagonist, Travis Bickle, in conversation with other Big Screen Outlaws, we find that the politics of resentment are co-constitutive with the violence of toxic masculinity.
Albert Camus’ The Fall specifies a new kind of self-flagellation. While Christians throughout history have flogged themselves to purify the world through their pain, believing that their sins cause civilization-wide catastrophes, Camus’ protagonist creates a closed circuit of vice and virtue: he confesses to his vices so that he many continue to enact them.
