Structural Violence

On this episode, Ryan and Todd cover the topic of structural violence in both U.S. and global contexts. Beginning with an implicit debt to Slavoj Žižek's influential book Violence, the hosts move to clarify the idea as how unwritten dictates of oppression sustain themselves through their being unwritten Where it is easier to see the violence of a thrown punch, for example, structural violence is the invisibility structuring why the punch was thrown. Visible violence often hides its less visible structuring force. For this reason, the hosts discuss the difficulty of depicting structural violence in popular film before moving through examples of structural violences both contemporary and historical.

You can listen to Structural Violence online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Structural Violence is an episode from Why Theory by Why Theory.

This episode is 01:16:09 long.

This episode was published on Jan 19, 2026.

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