Several scholars have stressed the limits of language in the course of researching violence or when writing about it (Appadurai 1996, Das 2007). Our language seems insufficient to describe the horrors of violence (Binford 2004). Often, words seem to be frozen, and experiences of violence thus appear as if they could only be voiced from a distant position (Das and Kleinman 2001). How can we grasp the meaning of violence? How can anthropologists document the far-reaching and long term effects of violent actions? Focusing solely on narratives of violence and the context in which they emerge, is not sufficient to understand the meaning and the effects of violence. Particularly in realms of human experience, it is obvious that verbal language represents merely one among several ways of expression like gestures, rituals or certain kinds of public manifestations. An exploration of the vast range of different modes of expression thus promises to be the more adequate way to approach, register and understand the comprehensive manifestations and long-lasting effects of violence. This is the basic consideration why we chose ‘expressions’ of violence as the title for this volume, and asked the contributors to document and to analyze the diverging forms in which violence is addressed or conveyed. All the chapters of this volume thus deal with a paradox, as they attempt to turn into text violent experiences that, as we just presumed, cannot be expressed through verbal everyday language. The chapters discuss violence that is communicated through silences, rumours, literary narrations, represented in muted bodies, in rituals or role models. In order to grasp the meaning of violence as such, the contributors applied different perspectives, methods and analytical approaches. To comprehend the unspoken and the silence, most of the researchers have chosen a haptic approach. We borrow this term from Nordstrom (2010), who has defined her approach as ‘research through the senses’. Nordstrom has described the complexity of violence, its blurriness and its routinization or almost naturalization. In a similar approach, Verrips (2007) criticized researchers’ self-imposed restriction on visual manifestation in general, and claimed that a more balanced attention should be paid to our entire bodily sensorial experience. ‘We would then focus on [the] difficulty to grasp phenomena as deeply felt emotions and desires […] as well as the irrational and the fantastic, the absurd and the surreal.’ Our heavy emphasis on the role of the mind, reason and rationality, should give way to an increased interest in the sensual and emotional dimensions that are inherent in ‘our somatic experience of reality’ (Verrips 2007: 31).

«Размышления о насилии» — самая известная работа французского философа и социолога Жоржа Сореля (1847-1922), в которой автор — теоретик революционного синдикализма — выдвигает понятие мифа о всеобщей стачке как коллективного мобилизующего представления, способного стать основой революционных преобразований. Единственный перевод книги на русский язык был сделан в 1907 году. Настоящее издание включает новую редакцию этого перевода, ранее не публиковавшееся на русском языке авторское предисловие и дополнительные главы, написанные для более поздних французских изданий книги, письма автора, адресованные издателю и одному из читателей, а также вступительную статью историка Жака Жюльяра.