War, Peace, and Texts

War, Peace, and Texts

Commenter Scott Gray left a detailed comment on a recent post, which I thought deserved to be highlighted in a post of its own. The original post asked whether it is appropriate to โ€œdo violence toโ€ violent texts. Scott explored some of the different types of โ€œpeaceโ€ and โ€œwarfareโ€ that one might engage in with respect to texts:

a few thoughts on textual violence:

โ€˜hot peaceโ€™ baseline: interactive collaboration; mutual prosperity; no mistrust or suspicion; absence of violence or intimidation: โ€œhonor thy father and mother, and their heritage and traditions, especially their sacred texts.โ€

โ€˜cold peaceโ€™ baseline: mutual indifference; no mistrust or suspicion; no violence or intimidation: โ€œignore thy father and mother, and their heritage and traditions, especially their sacred texts.โ€

โ€˜cold warโ€™ baseline: antagonism without open conflict; armed truce; mutual intimidation prevents violent engagement; mistrust and suspicion on both sides; feeling of immanent violence if conditions change and one party sees the possibility of an advantage; no covert violence: โ€œbe wary of thy father and mother, and their heritage and traditions, especially their sacred texts. and be ready to pounce when conditions are favorable. p.s: parodies and other forms of ridicule are ok.โ€

โ€˜hot warโ€™ baseline: violent warfare; the destruction or violent suppression of oneโ€™s opponent: โ€œkill and burn thy father and mother, and their heritage and traditions, especially their sacred texts.โ€

itโ€™s difficult, actually, to engage in โ€˜hot warโ€™ with the texts, unless they are suppressed, or the object of a book burning, or banned, or the authors have jihad placed on them.

so the best we can do for โ€˜violenceโ€™ is cold war. parodies. cartoons about the characters. political responses, filled with fallacies and emotionally charged rhetoric.

oddly enough, the โ€˜honorersโ€™ of the sacred texts view โ€˜cold peaceโ€™ as violence. in fact, they seem to view anything less than โ€˜honorโ€™ for the text as โ€˜hot war.โ€™ when these texts are not available for worship, evangelization, or other forms of โ€˜honor,โ€™ in public school, say, it is viewed as suppression or book banning.

actually, the dismissal of these texts in school is โ€˜cold peace.โ€™ the texts are ignored. or the texts are given the same degree of โ€˜honorโ€™ as any other textโ€”something to be studied.

What do you think? Is the analogy between war/violence and the ways we treat and interact with texts a helpful one?


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