Violence and Gray Zones
<p>In their anthology <em>Violence in War and Peace</em>, Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois collect a number of works ranging from thinkers like Levi to Foucault. The work centers around different historical instances of violence, but the majority is focused on the holocaust. Levi wrote a short piece titled “The Gray Zone,” which, in addition to being highly disturbing, illustrates what this concept means in simple terms. Effectively, when people are placed in more extreme circumstances, it is not so much a question of ethics as what is the most justifiable way to survive. This may sound simplistic, but the commentary on our moment is more nuanced: going beyond even the anomie that has been plaguing us for the past years, we are in a psychological gray zone, which is actually even more dangerous than a more objective one.</p>
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