The Semblable: Is a World Without Violence Possible?

Literary Nonfiction. Essay. Spanish poet and philosopher Chantal Maillard asks whether a world without violence is possible. Beginning with the tale of Nietzsche's embrace of the Turin horse, and engaging with thinkers from Confucius to Derrida to Sontag, Maillard reflects on how the concept of the "semblable" (one's other, neighbor, peer, fellow) justifies defensive foreign and domestic policy as well as state-sanctioned global violence. Can we broaden our "frameworks of belonging" and replace our narrow group and species-centered morals with an ethics of interspecies compassion? And if we could, given that the natural world cannot be sustained without violence, would it be possible to create change without violence?