Martin Mcdonagh Objective Violence

Martin McDonagh is one of the most successful contemporary playwrights whose plays are mostly known for being extremely violent and their characters are either cruel agents of violence or its victims. The predominant concept in McDonagh's plays is the concept of extreme violence which figures out his plays amongst other contemporary playwrights. This concept is availed by McDonagh not only for the sake of amusement but more importantly for the psychological and social reasons which are investigated in this paper.

McDonagh uses the concept of violence to attack mainly the family institution which he believes is "the primary source of hatred and murder" in his plays (Garcia 67). He also invades the individuals, the society (especially Irish society)

According to Zizek, subjective violence is the visible and tangible violence within the society and individuals, while objective violence is the cause of violence which remains invisible and unknown. Objective violence includes symbolic and systemic violence. Symbolic violence is inherited in language and systemic violence is inherited in the system of government.

Zizek elaborates on the violent and unexplainable bursts of violence within the societies as the results of the invisible violent oppression mechanisms or according to him what is called "systemic violence". According to Zizek, individuals who are continuously oppressed by the invisible systemic violence of the social system, react in the form of subjective violence. He suggests that as a reaction to the subjective violence that is the result of objective violence, “divine violence" occurs in the course of which “God himself has lost his neutrality and ‘fallen into’ the world, brutally intervening, and delivering justice. ‘Divine violence’ stands for such brutal intrusions of justice beyond law” (Zizek

It is not a visible mechanism of violence, but it is known there it exists and operates it power upon the members of the society and Zizek suggests that “it has to be taken into account if one is to make a sense of what otherwise seem to be ‘irrational’ explosions of subjective violence” (Zizek 2). So it is the kind of violence that is internal to the social system that surrounds us and that works through the imposition of power relations, “relations of domination and exploitation, including the threat of violence” (Zizek 9). Zizek explains his point with Lacan’s concept of the Master-Signifier which maintains the symbolic system of meanings. This ever existing mechanism of discursive violence imposes the standards of normalcy, according to Zizek. He argues that the imposition of the “presupposed standard of what the ‘normal’ [...] situation is, [is] the highest form of violence” (Zizek64). So this is why language, which is supposed to be “the very medium of non-violence, of mutual recognition, involves unconditional violence”