This article paints the portrait of Yvan, a skinhead who lived in close proximity to the streets and to life at the margins, with all its attendant violence, before dying at the age of 28. While the salient features of this portrait might seem to be social relegation and brutal racism, the value of this text is to be found in the complexity and nuance that Yvan brought to the descriptions of his own life. This insider perspective follows on from the tradition of biographical studies dedicated to the process of ‘becoming deviant’ inaugurated by the first sociologists of the Chicago School, while at the same time providing the material for a theoretical proposition expressed through the concepts of brutalized life and reflective violence. Much of Yvan’s life was a litany of violence, which he first endured, then threw back in society’s face and perpetrated himself, no doubt precisely because this life of his had been brutalized by such all-permeating violence. These two concepts have the potential to be extended to other cases and to enrich sociological debates about forms of violence that cannot fully be explained by situational and practical approaches (such as those of Randall Collins), or by perspectives that focus on structural and symbolic factors (as in the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu). The notions of reflective violence and brutalized life therefore transcend Yvan’s biography to form his sociological legacy.

这篇文章描绘了伊万的肖像，他是一个光头党，在 28 岁去世之前，他生活在靠近街道和边缘的生活中，伴随着所有随之而来的暴力。虽然这幅肖像的显着特征似乎是社会降级和残酷的种族主义，这篇文章的价值在于伊万对自己生活的描述带来的复杂性和细微差别。这种内部视角源自芝加哥学派第一批社会学家开创的致力于“变得越轨”过程的传记研究传统，同时为通过残酷生活的概念表达的理论命题提供材料和反思性暴力. 伊万的大部分生活都是一连串的暴力，他先是忍受了，然后又回到社会的面前，自相残杀，毫无疑问，正是因为他的这一生被这种无处不在的暴力所残酷。这两个概念有可能扩展到其他案例，并丰富关于无法通过情境和实践方法（例如兰德尔柯林斯的方法）或关注结构性和象征性因素的观点完全解释的暴力形式的社会学辩论（如皮埃尔·布迪厄的社会学）。因此，反思暴力和残酷生活的概念超越了伊万的传记，形成了他的社会学遗产。