War and peace in the Harry Potter series

Fairy tales and civilising processes

For the adult reader, the Harry Potter series clearly represents an allegory of the historical atrocities and ideological discourses of the Second World War. In the introduction to Harry Potter and History, Reagin (2011a), the editor of that volume, points out that ‘the parallels between Nazi ideology and the Death Eaters’ ideas are easy to identify even for nonhistorians’ (p. 4). The references to specific events, characters and ideas are easily identifiable. If this may be less obvious for children who are not yet aware of this historical period, it then becomes a powerful pedagogical tool for parents wishing to start the history education of their children. Indeed, this young generation will be the first not to know, or have known, direct witnesses of the Second World War. They will not meet camp survivors as previous generations did. Thus, we are faced with an unprecedented challenge of memory transmission. How do we explain the Holocaust to contemporary youth, especially given the unspeakable nature of such atrocities? How do we explain the discourses of exclusion upon which the Holocaust was predicated given North American society’s perception of itself as promoting pluralism? How do we explain the emergence of such extreme decivilising processes and behaviours? In a nutshell, we are back to a basic philosophical question: How do we make sense of our past? These are questions that – as parents, scholars and educators – we know too well, and to which we have no answers. The contention here is the following: the Harry Potter series can, to some extent, constitute a post-memory in Hirsch’s sense of a ‘retrospective witnessing by adoption’ (Hirsch, 2001: 10).

Furthermore, this series performs the same function as fairy tales; and therefore, Jack Zipes’ body of critical work on the latter is relevant to my discussion. Zipes wrote extensively on the intersections between fairy tales and the civilising process. He explained how the written transcription of oral tales by Charles Perrault and others in 17th century France responded to the need to socialise children (of the nobility and the bourgeoisie, with the diffusion in the lower classes happening later on) and to the development of the civilised habitus (Zipes, 2012: 34–39). All theoretical insights that Norbert Elias (2006) drew from his study of the Court Society can be similarly drawn from a study of the literature, and more particularly from children’s literature. Methodologically, it is also reminiscent of Elias’ method in On the Process of Civilisation (2012a) where he uses books of manners. In The Court Society, Elias offers an apparently superficial study of etiquette at the French Court during the 17th and the 18th centuries. Yet, by focusing on the Court, conceptualised as a central figuration, he is able to offer excellent insights concerning some important social, political and economic transformations: growing self-restraint, competition, social differentiation, increasingly long and complex chains of interdependences between members of the society, diffusion of norms and so on (for a brief review, see Van Krieken, 1998: 85–93). Notably, he describes how even Louis XIV, the most powerful man in Europe, the absolutist king par excellence, was part of an increasingly dense web of interdependences and therefore certainly not a free man. By doing so, Elias provides a brilliant critique of the homo clausus that positively challenges sociologies and social theories, which conceptualise individuals as ontological entities with a closed personality (for a discussion see Van Krieken, 1998: 56–57). If Elias was able to construct a whole social theory from the study of Court etiquette, certainly fantasy tales like Harry Potter offer many rich sociological insights.

Indeed, in the classical fairy tales as much as in the Harry Potter books, numerous representations of violence and civilisation are offered. On one level, fairy tales are directed mainly at inculcating good manners (how to be well behaved; how to obey; how to be a good future wife); but fairy tales also play with the basic binary of good and bad. The civilised and the barbaric are always embodied in various forms and characters. For instance, the forest always represents the barbaric land, full of danger; it is not a mastered space or a civilised space, contrary to the house. Some villains, animals and humans are also decivilised, while others are more advanced in the civilising process. Moreover, fairy tales are not only about socialisation in social roles but also largely about politics; fairy tales are indicative of the structure of human society at some point in time. If Perrault changed the traditional oral folk stories (which were much more gruesome), it was to insist on the taming of ‘natural’, violent, ‘uncivilised’ impulses. (Traditionally, Little Red Riding Hood eats and drinks the blood of her grandmother with a werewolf while Cinderella kills her evil stepmother. Both characters show courage and valour, as well as violence [Zipes, 2012: 43–45]).

In this respect, J.K. Rowling seems to negotiate the generic conventions of the fairy tale and find a mid-point. On one hand, she develops characters that show courage and are forced in some circumstances to resort to violence; on the other hand, some characters clearly participate in decivilising processes. But what is remarkable is that she avoids the trap of traditional fairy tales and binary dichotomies. All the characters have complex personality structures (even Voldemort, while in Hogwarts, was a ‘good’ boy); she shows the ambiguities and nuances of personalities, thus illuminating how difficult it is to maintain the balance between self-control and external constraints. Otherwise said, her characters are processual and relational, with the depiction of their development reminiscent of Elias’ point that ‘every human individual is fundamentally a social being’ (Elias, 2012b: 119). To this end, the Harry Potter series appears quite a fantastic avenue into better understanding the extent to which civilising processes go hand in hand with decivilising processes. It offers a much more realistic view of the complexities of a contemporary world characterised by a perpetual tilting of the balance between civilising processes and decivilising processes. In short, Harry Potter, as a fairy/fantasy tale, allows us to study ‘in conjunction with each other’, ‘the structures of the human psyche, the structures of human society and the structures of human history’ (Elias, 2001: 36).

To further justify my use of Harry Potter, I would like to recall the important insight of Helmut Kuzmics (2009) who asserts that

Sociology has much in common with literature. Does this mean that we must give up all claims to scientific objectivity and verifiable attempts to approach the truth? Quite the contrary! We would, however, be well advised to examine carefully both the literature present in sociology and the sociology in the novel, to explicate them and scrutinize their descriptive content within the process of communication between author and public. The novel and ‘scientificated’ sociology may gradually differ. They will not, however, differ so fundamentally that they would ever become estranged from one another. This may not be a bad thing for either sociology or literature. (p. 116)

Kuzmics has long been an important theorist of the relationships between literature and sociology (see Kuzmics and Mozetic, 2003), having illustrated throughout his career the multiple advantages of literary objects as sociological sources (after all literature, like the real social world, is much more complex and emotional than tables and logistic regressions would suggest). He is also a ‘practitioner’ as illustrated in the concept underlying his book on national character (Kuzmics and Axtmann, 2007), which is based mainly on literary sources. And indeed, the phenomenon whereby the Harry Potter books have become the best-selling series of all time, apart from the Bible, and have met with truly global success, must surely tell us something about the human condition in the contemporary world. For the literary merits of the series cannot fully explain its success. Its popularity is due to its appeal to particular emotions and to its ability to help its readers make sense of a world that seems deprived of any emotions and meanings. Indeed, these books have not been bought by hundreds of millions of people merely for the purpose of entertainment; they also fulfil a ‘cognitive-descriptive’ function because they ‘complement our knowledge of the social world’ (Kuzmics and Axtmann, 2007: 20).

The first group: on the difficulties of maintaining a civilised habitus

As Becker (2009) emphasises, ‘[T]he continuing disciplining of emotions is considered to be crucial for the future of modern society, whose very existence depends on the effective control of our impulses and drives’ (p. 200). Harry Potter constantly tries to discipline his emotions. As much as they can, he and his friends use spells that do not inflict harm or cause death to their enemies. Yet, Dumbledore encourages Harry to not only tame but also experience his emotions. Perhaps one may think here of a neo-modern perception that rationalisation, individualisation and individuation and extreme functional differentiation (all elements of modernisation) have gone too far and that therefore we are witnessing a backlash in which violence is a response to the excessive disciplining of emotions imposed as a form of social regulation. (I like the image of the pressure cooker). Simply put, our civilisation has to return to a balance. And indeed, Elias continually emphasised the need for a balance between self-control and external constraints; he never said that the apex of civilisation would provide a perfect regulatory mechanism for emotions and affect. Therefore, there is a rejection of some of the teleological liberal discourses that pervade our Weltanschauung and sociological discourses. In that respect, Rowling offers an important sociological account.

The discipline of emotions is anything but natural; it requires work. Several scenes highlight this reality. The civilised habitus is more or less deeply internalised; but even when deeply internalized, sometimes the external constraints are more powerful than self-control. Because, after all, we are humans; sometimes the balances tilts, or, to put it differently, the pressure cooker explodes. For example, after Bellatrix kills Sirius, Harry, saddened by the death of his godfather and full of revenge, pursues Bellatrix and uses the Crucio spell, but not to much effect. Indeed, as Bellatrix explains to him, for the spell to truly be successful (that is, to really inflict pain on someone), the wizard must desire to see the other suffer. And that Harry cannot do:

Hatred rose in Harry such as he had never known before; he flung himself out from behind the fountain and bellowed, ‘Crucio’. Bellatrix screamed: the spell had knocked her off her feet, but she did not writhe and shriek with pain as Neville did (…). ‘Never used an Unforgivable Curse before, have you, boy?’ she yelled. She had abandoned her baby voice now. ‘You need to mean them, Potter! You need to really want to cause pain – to enjoy it.’ (Rowling, 2003: 715)

Minutes later, both Voldemort and Dumbledore enter the scene and engage in a duel. Here again, two opposite views of civilisation are expressed: Dumbledore wants to save Harry; Voldemort wants to kill both of them. But Dumbledore does not use death spells:

‘You do not seek to kill me, Dumbledore?’ called Voldemort, his scarlet eyes narrowed over the top of the shield. ‘Above such brutality, are you?’

‘We both know that there are other ways of destroying a man, Tom’ (…)

‘There is nothing worse than death, Dumbledore!’ snarled Voldemort.

‘You are quite wrong’, said Dumbledore (…). ‘Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness –’ (Rowling, 2003: 718)

Hearing that, Voldemort takes possession of Harry’s body:

‘Kill me now, Dumbledore…’

Blinded and dying, every part of him screaming for release, Harry felt the creature use him again…

‘If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy…’

Let the pain stop, thought Harry…let him kill us…end it, Dumbledore…death is nothing compared to this…

And I’ll see Sirius again…

And as Harry’s heart filled with emotion, the creature’s coils loosened, the pain was gone (…) (Rowling, 2003: 720)

These excerpts explain the very important role of emotions in sanctioning or promoting violence. First of all, the inability to experience empathy and thus the complete lack of self-restraint in the use of violence relies on one particular emotion: fear, or more precisely, the fear of death. For much of human history, the fear of death has pushed people to extreme behaviour, whether expressed in the search for a magical potion to live forever (Rowling, 1997), or in the willingness to kill anyone that represents a threat to one’s survival. The human treatment of death is a key indicator of the condition of the civilising process, as Elias (2010: 4–5) pointed out in his study on the loneliness of dying.

Several times, Rowling clearly suggests that ‘Harry’s capacity to love and be loved protect him from evil and enable him to protect others’ (Collins Smith, 2010: 87). Thus the emotions of love and empathy characterise the civilising process, while fear and hatred are expressions of decivilising processes. A balance in favour of self-control, expressed in the ability to exercise restraint in the use of violence and to show empathy towards others, signifies a civilised habitus. A balance in favour of external control, expressed in delight in witnessing or inflicting suffering, exemplifies the early stages of the civilising process or the decivilising process.

Other scenes exhibit the inherent difficulties of maintaining a balance in favour of self-control over external social constraints. For instance, Harry, Ron and Hermione have to fight against two Death Eaters in a London café. They manage to subdue them and then the question arises as to what to do with them:

‘What are we going to do with them?’ Ron whispered to Harry through the dark; then, even more quietly, ‘Kill them? They’d like to kill us. They had a good go just now’.

Hermione shuddered and took a step backwards. Harry shook his head.

‘We just need to wipe out their memories’, said Harry. (Rowling, 2007: 139)

In fact, there are only two clear scenes where we see members of the Order of the Phoenix kill, and both unfold during the last battle that will decide the future destiny of the Wizards’ world, and for that matter the muggle world. The duel between Molly and Bellatrix is clearly a duel in which one of them has to die. Molly uses the Death spell (Rowling, 2007: 589–590). What emotions underlie such a violent act? Well, Molly is unquestionably motivated by revenge, but she also acts to protect her daughter and Hermione. Harry, in the last scene, kills Voldemort because it is the only way to end the decivilising processes at play. And to be precise, he does not cause death; it is Voldemort’s own death spell that rebounds against him. Harry only uses a disarming spell. In a previous scene, during the duel in the Forbidden Forest, Harry escapes death. When he asks Dumbledore how such an escape was possible, the Professor explains to him that it is because he was ready to die. As Austin (2010: 258–270) points out, Harry and Socrates have something in common: ‘both decide to die for very important reasons’. Harry is the incarnation of the virtuous and happy person as he possesses the ‘four “cardinal values” of wisdom, moderation, courage and justice’ (Austin, 2010: 262).

The second group: on the early development of the civilising process

This group, comprised of the Death Eaters and their chief Voldemort, shows the early stages of the development of the civilising process. The members of this group represent ‘the emotional expression of mediaeval people (…) relatively more spontaneous and unrestrained’ for whom ‘the perpetration of violence was regarded as a pleasure’ (Fletcher, 1997: 16). On one hand, there are characters like Bellatrix and Voldemort who kill and torture endlessly with pleasure; but also depicted are characters like Lucius Malfoy and his wife Narcissa. Although on the side of the Dark forces, they show a certain level of self-restraint in their behaviours. For instance, they show disgust when Voldemort kills people in their own house. During the final battle, they are obsessed with the survival of their son Draco and do not participate in the killings. Narcissa even saves Harry’s life in the Forbidden Forest, because all she wants is to save Draco’s life. She knows unconditional love, as does Lucius; and at the end of the day, it makes all the difference in distinguishing them from the childless Bellatrix and Voldemort. These distinctions illustrate particularly well what Elias says about the social relatedness of people and the development, through one’s life, of relationships: ‘[t]he historicity of each individual, the phenomenon of growing up to adulthood, is the key to an understanding of what “society” is’ (Elias, 2001: 25). Voldemort perceives himself solely as an ‘I’, while Harry, although parentless, has family ties. His is by no means the greatest family – he has suffered neglect and is not loved by his aunt and uncle – but it starkly separates him from Voldemort who is raised in an orphanage. Voldemort is hostage to his own narcissistic self-image, deprived of any meaningful relations to others, whereas Harry is conscious of being part of a society, of a history (Elias, 2001: 21–31). In other words, they have manifested a different individual habitus – ‘the learned emotional and behavioural disposition’ (Fletcher, 1997: 11) – since infancy.

Their distinct views of their self-image are constitutive of their perceptions of violence and harm. A recurrent discourse in the series is the power of love in overcoming impulses of death and violence. Loving and being loved are essential for the civilising process. While Elias did not explicitly address the subject of human love to any extent, it is there, I think, that we can better understand how the civilising process comes to unfold. A serious work on emotions (for instance, Hopkins et al., 2009), and an insistence on their social role, is paramount to exploring the trajectory of this process. The processual character of the civilising process is exemplified in the Harry Potter series in the spectrum of viewpoints towards violence expressed by various characters of this second group. Voldemort and Bellatrix illustrate a dangerously low degree of civilisation: at no time do these two show any positive emotions, nor do they exhibit shame, which Fletcher (1997) names as the emotion that ‘links social and individual pacification or control of violence as a means to solve social and personal conflicts’ (p. 29). They are entirely deprived of the ability to love and to empathise and clearly derive pleasure from inflicting harm and suffering, as their equivalents did in mediaeval times. But some Death Eaters are more hesitant in inflicting violence. The Malfoys, for instance, are more advanced in the civilising process.

So far, we have seen that emotions such as love, fear and shame are essential elements to be taken into consideration but other kinds of emotions such as pride, pettiness and courage also play an important role.

The third group: on the decivilising of the habitus

The attitudes of the different prime ministers and civil servants described in the Harry Potter series illuminate the relationship between violence, emotions and power. The violent foundational character of any political regime, and how it is reconcilable with a civilised habitus, must be discussed. According to Walter Benjamin (2012: 55–102), political power and law are always created by, and indeed founded upon, violence. A legal regime is always based on this elementary form of violence. To put it in more Eliasian terms, insofar as politics is always about power relations (i.e. the ability to constrain others and compel them to act a certain way), violence is always present. But violent relations can be more or less mastered, tamed or civilised. Benjamin (2012: 79) highlighted the importance of confidence, courtesy and love of peace and friendship in his reflections on non-violent means to solve inter-personal conflicts.

Two prime ministers in the series offer contradictory visions of the relationship between violence and power (between the political and the politics). On one hand, Scrimgeour represents the Man of State; on the other hand, Fudge personifies the politician. The former illustrates grandeur, the latter pettiness. Scrimgeour sees the recourse to violence as a necessary evil for the sake of achieving the public good; Fudge does not hesitate to use violence for his personal sake and private interests.

The attitudes of civil servants are quite illustrative of the process of civilisation. Rowling brilliantly describes what, in fact, happened with large portions of the German and the French administrations – to name only these two – in the face of the takeover by racist and fascist regimes. In the recent history of the Second World War, most bureaucrats turned a blind eye, adapted quickly and continued with their daily tasks. And in the Rowling series one finds an analogous situation. At one extreme, one finds a minority that turned to the Resistance and used their job positions to help (Arthur Weasley and Shacklebolt for instance); and at the other extreme, one witnesses a minority that became extremely zealous in its collaboration with the new regime in order to appease their lower, base instincts (Umbridge). Others, like Percy Weasley, exhibit the internal struggle of many civil servants to take a position. At the beginning, Percy aligns himself with Fudge and denies the return of Voldemort; at the end, he redeems himself and participates in the final battle. In the latter scene, what is useful is to see how new social conditions tilt the balance between self-restraint and external constraints one way or the other. Elias did not think that rationality was the driving force of the process of civilisation. What must be taken into account are ‘the unplanned dynamics of social competition and social interweaving that foster the development of “delicate” sensibilities’ (Fletcher, 1997: 15).

As several members of the Order of the Phoenix illustrate, people’s behaviours are largely determined by fear – specifically fear arising from social competition. People do not dare to speak up; they behave as if a new regime has not taken over because they fear for themselves and their families. Elias (2001: 164) underlines that the processes of social integration and their levels can change ‘quite suddenly’. During Voldemort’s initial rise to power, the level of social integration decreased dramatically to the point where the ‘survival unit’ was almost exclusively restricted to the individual self (a state reminiscent of the idea of the atomisation of society described by Arendt (1966) to characterise totalitarianism). Then when Voldemort faded, the level of social integration increased, with the survival unit enlarging to encompass the community of the wizards. When Voldemort reappeared, the level decreased again, with small groups (like families) perceived as survival units; the insecurity, fear and suspicion made it impossible to perceive the wizards’ community as the survival unit. Finally, during the period between the final battle and Voldemort’s ultimate defeat, the level of integration rises to new heights where the whole of humanity (wizards and muggles) is considered as the last survival unit. This portrait matches the Eliasian widening of identification (Elias, 2001: 168) and the Kantian ideal of a global cosmopolitan community as the last survival unit (Linklater, 2005, 2010, 2011). Or, to be more precise, during this fatal period, wizards, magical creatures and muggles realised the need to increase their level of integration. Their interdependence becomes apparent in the context of Voldemort’s use of violence and challenge to the strict control of violence exercised by the Ministry of Magic on the magical world on the one hand, and by the State on the muggle world on the other hand. As Kaspersen and Gabriel (2008: 378–381) recall, a survival unit is characterised by definition as in control of the means of violence and embodying the highest level of social integration. So, in the Rowling series, these survival units merge into one single survival unit because of the extraordinary danger Voldemort represents. Although readers do not know whether that ‘merger’ will indeed remain and become a global survival unit with the conclusion to the story refusing to settle the question, the situation again recalls our contemporary world: Will the European Union concretise into a survival unit and will it assimilate other units to form a global community? While no one knows, three remarks can be made. First, ‘[T]he demarcation and the boundaries of a survival unit are never fixed. Demarcation and boundary making processes are always volatile, precarious and open ended processes’ (Kaspersen and Gabriel, 2008: 385). Second, as Elias (2001) notes, it is ‘realistic’ to speak of humanity as the ‘overarching survival unit today’ as exemplified in the concern for human rights, and as illustrated in Harry and his friends’ concern for magical creatures and muggles (p. 232). Although Elias (1987) was not particularly optimistic about the emergence of a global survival unit, he thought its attainment was ‘worth trying’, as do the members of the Order of Phoenix (p. 76). Third, the concern that ‘a survival unit always needs another to recognise you’, articulated by Kaspersen and Gabriel (2008), and that a global cosmopolitan survival unit is therefore impossible, only exists if one thinks of the other as the ‘same kind’ of oneself (for example, a state needs to be recognised by another state) (p. 382). My contention is that this other could be History, namely traumatic history. Isn’t the European Union constructed as an historical other – to the Holocaust trauma – rather than a geographical other (historically the Orient)? (Lacassagne, 2012) In Harry Potter, it is the memory of the atrocities committed by Voldemort upon first seizing power that pushes muggles, wizards and magical creatures to bond together and fight his imminent return.

Two opposite worldviews

One of the narrative threads of the Rowling series is the opposition between two Weltangschauungen: a racialised and exclusionary one and a cosmopolitan, inclusive and egalitarian one. Voldemort and his Death Eaters base their discourse on a hierarchy of races: at the top are the Pure-Bloods, in the middle the Half-Bloods and at the bottom the muggles and other races like the elves. Those who are not considered pure are seen as slaves, and the Pure-Bloods have the right to kill them. ¹ Sirius explains this ideology shared by the noble Black family:

they thought Voldemort had the right idea, they were all for the purification of the wizarding race, getting rid of Muggle-borns and having pure-bloods in charge. They weren’t alone, either, there were quite a few people, before Voldemort showed his true colours, who thought he had the right idea about things…they got cold feet when they saw what he was prepared to do to get power, though. (Rowling, 2003: 104)

When Voldemort takes over the Ministry, he establishes a totalitarian regime and institutes racial laws. Some civil servants like Umbridge remain and collaborate, sometimes zealously, with this new regime. It is difficult to miss the analogy with Nazism and the collaborationist regimes like Vichy. And like in reality, a resistance movement emerges with the Order of the Phoenix. As in reality, the new regime first advances slyly, practising an incremental policy of repression, as Hitler did. The goal of that manoeuvre is of course to provoke apathy among the people; when they wake up, it will be too late. People, paralysed by fear, are in denial and consider the Order alarmist. People believe in the propaganda diffused by the Daily Prophet; they refuse to admit that the newspaper has become a propaganda instrument. It is Munich in 1938; it is Chamberlain qualifying Hitler as a gentleman. The few massacres and murders of muggles during the slow takeover are considered unfortunate accidents. When people can no longer remain in denial, when totalitarianism is installed, the resistance gets bigger, but it is more difficult to organise. Fear is everywhere. People do not know in whom to place their confidence; the separation between the public sphere and the private sphere is wiped out, a basic and unique characteristic of a totalitarian regime according to Hannah Arendt (1966). The purges start from within with the creation of the muggle-born registration commission (Rowling, 2007: 203–220) targeting the civil servants, an analogy with the first law against the Jews in Germany which excluded them from civil service (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums, GWB, promulgated on the 7 April 1933). We also see a manipulation of the symbols, and more precisely their complete inversion, as with, for example, the Magical Fountain of the Ministry:

Harry looked more closely and realised that what he had thought were decoratively carved thrones were actually mounds of carved humans; hundreds and hundreds of naked bodies, men, women and children, all with rather stupid, ugly faces, twisted and pressed together to support the weight of the handsomely robed wizards; (Rowling, 2007: 199)

of course, in the collective imagination, this image reminds us of other images.

The analogy goes one step further if we pay attention to some biographical elements. As Hitler did not correspond to the Aryan ideal-type, Voldemort is not a Pure-Blood but a half-blood. Voldemort is an orphan. Hitler lost his mother when he was quite young which was a deep trauma according to the specialists, and, like Voldemort, he hated his father. (Here, Rowling creates biographical correspondences between Hitler and her fictional character based on widespread views of Hitler’s youth. In fact, historians as well as psycho-historians disagree not only about Hitler’s youth itself but also its impact on his actions (for a review of these debates, see Kren, 1978; and the seminal chapter ‘The Legend of Hitler’s Childhood’ by Erikson (1985: 326–358)). The transposition of the written text into films makes such parallels clearer: the Death Eaters are dressed like Schutzstaffel (SS) with the skull and cross-bones imprinted as symbols on their uniforms. During the battle, we see a division of the troops: the SS-Death Eaters; the Wehrmacht; the other Pure-Bloods; and the auxiliaries (the Giants and the snatchers) like the Ukrainians, Poles, Latvians and so on.

Whereas the troop’s discourse is predicated on violence and exclusion, the opposite discourse – simply based on love – is defended by the Order. Numerous analogies can be discerned between the behaviours of the members of the Order and the actual members of resistance movements (a permanent change of place, hideouts, treasons, fear for one’s family, the use of the radio and secret codes to communicate). But resistance starts with Lily’s ultimate maternal sacrifice to save her son – to protect him to the point of her own death. This serves as a Kantian analogy: Am I ready to lose my life to save more lives? The members of the Order show a great measure of empathy. They reject egocentrism and short-term personal gain for the long-term public good. They are conscious that the whole of humanity is the last survival unit. Voldemort not only represents evil but also the egocentrism denounced by Elias:

Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realise that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back! (Rowling, 2005: 477).

All the books in the series are rife with such political commentaries. The numerous discourses of Dumbledore are, in many instances, a rhetorical defence of a global cosmopolitan community. One discourse is worth citing as it reveals the spirit of the Resistance:

‘Muggles remain ignorant of the source of their suffering as they continue to sustain heavy casualties’, said Kingsley. ‘However, we continue to hear truly inspirational stories of wizards and witches risking their own safety to protect Muggle friends and neighbours, often without the Muggles’ knowledge. I’d like to appeal to all our listeners to emulate their example, perhaps by casting a protective charm over any Muggle dwellings in your street. Many lives could be saved if such simple measures are taken’.

‘And what would you say, Royal, to those listeners who reply that in these dangerous times, it should be “wizards first”?’ asked Lee.

‘I’d say that it’s one short step from “wizard first” to “pure-blood first”, and then to “Death Eaters”’, replied Kingsley. ‘We’re all human, aren’t we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving’. (Rowling, 2007: 357)

The level of the civilised habitus and the motives of resistance are identified by Lupin a few lines later as ‘everything for which we are fighting: the triumph of good, the power of innocence, the need to keep resisting’. (Rowling, 2007: 357–358). And it is this resistance that Voldemort wants to destroy by any means: ‘[A]nyone who continues to resist, man, woman or child, will be slaughtered, as will every member of their family’. (Rowling, 2007: 583–584).

What we see are two views of the process of civilisation and of war – two views that radically depart from one another in their approach to what Elias calls ‘the structure of communal life’. To better understand their differences, it is paramount to understand this structure:

In this way, through network forces, peaceful periods of history have been produced and are produced no less than turbulent and revolutionary ones, flowering no less than ruin, phases of high art and of pale imitation. All these changes have their origins not in the nature of individual people but in the structure of the communal life of many. History is always the history of a society, but, to be sure, of a society of individuals. (Elias, 2001: 45)

Established and outsider dynamics

In order to dissect this Eliasian conceptualisation, the seminal study of The Established and the Outsiders (Elias and Scotson, 1994) seems a promising point of departure. In his introduction, Elias is adamant that to understand power configurations, what is needed is a serious look at the internal cohesion and communal control of group dynamics. Voldemort and the Death Eaters perceive themselves as the established because the ‘length of association’, the ‘oldness’ of their group seems well founded (Dunning and Hughes, 2013: 64). They have family trees linking them that reach far back into the past. The level of communal control and cohesion within that group is higher because the group is smaller. Because they define themselves in exclusionary terms, they stigmatise, demean (see, for example, the jokes made by the Death Eaters about Tonks – a Pure-Blood – having a child with Remus – a werewolf), and dehumanise others to continually re-assert their group identity and superiority (Elias and Scotson, 1994: xviii–xxii). But, despite their exclusionary practices, the Death Eaters are outsiders themselves. As with arguably any outsider groups, what bonds the so-called Pure-Bloods together is far less elastic than what bonds the perceived outsiders; it relies on blood rather than an ideal of togetherness, equality, freedom, respect, love and so on:

There are others, such as nations, classes or ethnic minority groups, where the bonds of identification of individuals with their group and their participation by proxy in the collective attributes are far less elastic. The collective disgrace attached to such groups both by other more powerful groups and embodied in standard invectives and stereotyped blame-gossip has a deep anchorage in the personality structure of their members as part of their individual identity and as such cannot be easily shaken off. (Elias and Scotson, 1994: 103)

For Harry, the survival unit incorporates the human community of (all) wizards and muggles as well as other creatures (goblins, elves, etc.). For Voldemort, the survival unit is confined to the Pure-Bloods. It is a simpler web of interconnectedness. But we know that the more dense and complex the web becomes, the more one needs to refine and regulate one’s emotions. As Pure-Bloods live and reproduce among themselves, there is almost no social competition or social interweaving, and thus hardly any development of sensibilities:

Concomitantly with the development of societies from ‘survival units’ of bands, villages or tribes into towns or states, there occurs the development of personality structure in the direction of greater individualization. This process of individualization is owed to affiliation of individuals to larger survival units and the corresponding need to face the complex demands of increasingly dense webs of social interdependence. (Kuzmics and Axtmann, 2007: 6)

The tasks faced by Harry are multifaceted and much more difficult to accomplish, than those confronting Voldemort, but that does mean that they are not worth trying. Rowling ends her story on an optimistic note, with a happy ending. Elias was perhaps more realistic, and recognised that ‘it would require a great deal of effort […] to legitimize the free expression of the destructive emotions’ (Fletcher, 1997: 24). If anything, the beginning of the 21st century serves as a painful reminder that decivilising processes can indeed happen quite quickly.