“Change only for the benefit of society as a whole”: pragmatism, knowledge and regimes of violence

By temperament and pragmatic intellectual conviction, Durkheim seems to have been averse to violence. His notion that suicide threatened the social whole or that the violence of social revolution was counterproductive, indicate as much. Yet in other areas of social life, such as in Durkheim's views of physical punishment and discipline in schools of his pedagogical work, or in his insensitivity to the fate of victims of religious and ritual sacrifice, an acceptance of violence, even death, appears to infuse his writings. Furthermore, there are also arguments to be made of the support that Durkheimian theory may have offered to regimes of French colonial domination during the Third Republic. Similarly, did Durkheim's societal thinking aid the rise of fascist organicism by offering it intellectual legitimacy? Such cases thus raise doubts about the consistency of Durkheimian thought with political violence or regimes of domination, like those explored by Michel Foucault. Among these matters I discuss whether there is a sense in which Durkheim may have been perceived as a supporter of schemes in which knowledge conspires to condition regimes of power, such those referred to as institutional violence.