Empatía y humillación: sobre La Violencia en Colombia

Abstract

This text attempts an answer to the following question: How should we interpret the extreme and alarming conditions that characterize the rural war during the time of La Violenciain Colombia? I proceed first by analyzing the answer given to this question by the Colombian anthropologist María Victoria Uribe. According to Uribe, the sustained and sanguinary harm imposed upon the enemy’s body during the years of La Violenciais to be explained by the fact that the perpetrators didn’t truly seetheir victims as human beings. Taking into account the meanings of the terms “empathy” and “humiliation” proposed respectively by E. Husserl y A. Margalit, I move on to show how – given conditions of normality – it is not possible to attribute a determinate meaning to the idea of “seeing” employed by Uribe to support her own interpretation.