Shapes of Violence and Personal Identity in Hannah Arendt

Abstract

This article examines Arendtean conception of violence by taking into account the activities of Vita Activa (labor, work and action) and their respective types of human beings (animal laborans, homo faber y zoon politikón), from its complicated connection to the (des)configuration of personal identity. Depending on wether we focus on one or another activity, as well as the relationship with the “world” and “the others”, we will be able to find out different shapes of violence and its connections with the possibilities of shaping personal identity. If, at first sight, Arendt´s notion of violence appears to be restricted to the instrumental mentality of homo faber, this paper aims to explore certain expansions offered by the same Arendt´s work, and which not only transcend physical and instrumental dimensions of violence, but also they make flexible its prepolitical limits within which, initially, it seems to be strictly enclosed.