11 - Irrevocable Blood: Violence and Collective Identity Formation in the Late Twelfth Century

Summary

War is a violent teacher, and it seems that violence does most of the teaching. In this chapter I would like to explore the relationship between violence and collective identity formation: just as the latter requires interaction with, and more often opposition to, the Other, so does violence; to erupt, its object must first be othered. War is, of course, primarily a repertoire of violence: people are killed and abused, things are destroyed; but there are differences in how people are killed and abused, what things are destroyed and how these things are depicted – and that difference is meaningful.

Violence is a useful analytical concept. By its sheer force it demands to be taken seriously. It imposes and codifies difference: victims of violence are different from its perpetrators. In the cases I will discuss below, it is the latter who impose the distinction by tailoring the violence towards specific attributes of their victims, thus making sure that the difference is clearly understood. The ritualised aspects of the violent acts I will explore in this chapter constitute a distorting mirror that is held to the Other, a mirror of misrecognition, showing them to be heretic, impure, effeminate and animal-like, and the violence meted out to them attempts to fix this distorted image, to impose the perpetrator's discourse (strong, masculine, hegemonic). The resistance to accept it is what triggers the strengthening of identity and, of course, the mirroring of violence. A victim is made to understand that the specific violence meted out to them is a result of a difference and that this difference makes the violence possible and justifiable in the eyes of its perpetrator. Moreover, physical group violence additionally functions as a catalyst for existing differences and tensions. Once it erupts, it makes the return to a period where difference was debated principally through discourse much more difficult and stimulates a more acute expression of difference, facilitating in this way the formation of distinct identities.

In the case of collective identity formation in the Byzantine Empire, a privileged role has been assigned to the contact and conflict with westerners, especially Normans and crusaders, from the twelfth century onwards. Despite (or perhaps as a result of) close proximity, the self-perception of each side crystallised into a form that was unlike, or even the polar opposite of, that Other.