The Ethics and Ideologies of Self-Defence

What are the ethics and ideologies of self-defence? Self-defence has a variety of legal and ideological cultural histories, shapes and forms (Bowman, 2023; Dodsworth, 2015). Scholars have shown that, in different countries, at different times, the right to self-defence has been heavily allocated to certain subjects (e.g., white, propertied, male) and withheld from others (Light, 2017). Others have shown the extent to which women’s self-defence was a significant element of the first wave of the feminist movement in the UK (Dodsworth, 2019; Godfrey, 2012), and argued that learning how to fight and be aggressive may be an enabling and potentially emancipatory element of physical feminism (McCaughey, 1997).

But, as philosopher Elsa Dorlin asks (Dorlin, 2022), is self-defence ethical? Is teaching self-defence ethical, and who can or should teach whom? What should be taught, to whom, and based on what qualifications? Where does self-defence begin and end? Where does the ‘self’ to be defended start and end, and what are the limits of ‘defence’ – the body, the mind, clothing, technology, architecture, or the physical management of space? Ultimately, as philosopher Peter Sloterdijk has argued, almost everything that humans have done to ward off one or another kind of threat might be viewed as self-defence (Sloterdijk, 2013).

This symposium starts from the most conventional understanding of ‘self-defence’: as learned, taught and practiced interpersonal, face-to-face, body-to-body skills, training, techniques, tactics, strategies, rationales, outlooks and ideologies.

It asks:

Our premise is that interpersonal self-defence is a more complicated and controversial ethical, ideological and political matter than it may at first appear.

Host or Publisher Professor Paul Bowman (Cardiff University)