Actions vs. Accusations of Vengeance and Violence
4. The Rites of Riposte and Retaliation
5. A Call for Submissions: The Catechism of Vengeance
6. The Fury of Gina and the Guilty Conscience
7. The New Face of Anger
8. The Politics of Revenge in an Age of Empowerment
9. The Politics of Vengeance and Revenge in Contemporary Times
10. Concluding Remarks
11. References
17. Vengeance and the Rule of Law
1. I Vengeance and the Rule of Law
2. II Vengeance and Justice
3. III Vengeance and the Rule of Law
4. IV Reversing the Tyrannical Impulse of Anger
18. Bibliography
19. Index
1. Cover
2. Table of Contents
1. Preface to the English Edition
2. Foreword
3. Introduction
4. Chapter 1: What Is Revenge?
5. Chapter 2: Vengeance and Honor
6. Chapter 3: The Rite of Revenge
7. Chapter 4: The Rites of Riposte and Retaliation
8. Chapter 5: A Call for Submissions: The Catechism of Vengeance
9. Chapter 6: The Fury of Gina and the Guilty Conscience
10. Chapter 7: The New Face of Anger
11. Chapter 8: The Politics of Revenge in an Age of Empowerment
12. Chapter 9: The Politics of Vengeance and Revenge in Contemporary Times
13. Conclusion
14. Bibliography
15. Index
16. Subject Index
2. Back Cover
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1. Cover
2. Title Page
3. Table of Contents
4. Index
5. Copyright Page
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# WAR AND VENGEANCE
1. War and Vengeance
## Preface to the English Edition
Why is _War and Vengeance_ dedicated to Jean-Luc Nancy? The French philosopher Nancy has, for a long time, written on forgiveness and the refusal of revenge. This book, which investigates the relationship between war and vengeance, stems from a specific dialogue with Nancy. In his introduction to _Violence et Métaphysique: Essais sur la puissance_ (Violence and Metaphysics: Essays on the Power), Nancy suggests that one must choose to either die of self-pity, or to kill in order to survive. While the two choices are at opposite poles, Nancy does not give us any information on how to proceed. The following pages offer some guidelines, at least, in the form of an investigation into the history of vengeance, from Homer to Nancy's reflections on the matter.
For more than four years, I have been working on this subject. Since I first gave courses on the History of Violence in which I described and analysed what happens in war—to kill, to be killed, and to make war—I have continued to follow and participate in the political debate surrounding the theme. For my generation, the two World Wars and the subsequent military interventions in Europe and the Middle East made us realize that war is not merely a moment that one might see on a screen or imagine while reading a book, but an actual experience which could destroy one's life.
In this regard, Homer's book _The Iliad_ must be seen as an exemplary work on violence. All our thinking about war goes back to the original book, where war and vengeance determine the fate of humanity. The _Iliad_ describes a very particular event: in a state of emergency, a great crisis erupts between two countries; it is the Trojan War. Neither side initiates war, but, all of a sudden, a powerful army on horseback shows up in the middle of the countryside. The Trojans are caught off guard by the arrival of this army; they immediately suspect that the enemy, the Achaeans, is responsible for their destruction. The Trojans immediately react to this threat, not because they themselves are guilty of this hostility but because they want to understand the event and to understand how it has come about. The first thing they do is to call an assembly of all the Greek and Trojan leaders. All the other states in Greece take part in the discussion: it is an extraordinary assembly of the gods, who descend to the plain of Troy to get involved in this event.
However, all this is useless: war has already started; not only have the aggressors begun fighting, but their numbers are many times larger than those of the Trojans. As he listens to all these speeches, Achilles, one of the leading warriors, is furious at what he has done, since he was the one who did the most damage and was responsible for the destruction of the Greek fleet in battle. Despite being the greatest warrior, Achilles also feels powerless: he does not know how he can stop the war; he will now have to die like a coward, killed by Paris, son of King Priam.
The violence of war has begun. Even before the war breaks out, it already exists. Every war begins with a crime, a crime against the gods. Every war, no matter what the cause, means that one side is trying to exterminate the other; there is an implacable hatred that has been long concealed but which becomes obvious in a single moment: a single death, a single act. This is what brings out a violence that is stronger than all hatred. But how to understand this? What does this violence mean? If war is also love, then why does a warrior have to kill his love, his beloved? How is war and war's love possible?
Nancy's reflections on war and war's love show us that vengeance is at the heart of the problem. War is a desire for revenge that has been long repressed. Nancy writes:
> It is not surprising, then, that in ancient Greece and later in classical Europe, as well as elsewhere in Antiquity, such an overwhelming sense of war's violence existed, that war appeared to be such an uncontainable and uncontrollable force. This force was so much so that, if one wanted to understand the workings of all power in modernity, beginning with the Renaissance, one had to return to a profound analysis of the essence of power at the heart of the question of war.
>
> (Nancy, 1998, p. 8)
From Homer to Machiavelli, Nietzsche and Heidegger, Homer's book has always been central to debates about war and violence. War, in the sense we use the term in contemporary culture, is ancient, but war as we understand the term today, that is, the way war is presented by the media and by the leaders of public opinion, is a response to specific moments, whether it is the Second World War, the Balkan wars of the 1990s, the War on Terror in Iraq, or the war in Afghanistan.
The first part of the book gives a detailed account of how wars are presented in contemporary media. In today's so-called democratic and prosperous societies, war is presented as a game, and it is played like a game. Vengeance is transformed into law and order. Thus, when today we read that 'revenge is a crime' or that we should 'not get revenge' on the enemy, what is actually being said is that war should be made part of a 'game', a game that puts in question justice. War should become a game in
