scholarly journals Benjamin on the Border

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 306-319
Author(s):  
Michelle Ty
Keyword(s):  
Constitutive Relation ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Legal Violence ◽  
Divine Violence ◽  
Creative Force ◽  
Who Steps ◽  
Separate And Unequal ◽  
Border Crossers ◽  
Critique Of Violence ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract This essay offers a critique of contemporary regimes of migrant repression in light of Walter Benjamin's reflections on borders and their constitutive relation to legal violence. In paragraphs 15–17 of “Toward the Critique of Violence,” Benjamin evokes the legend of Niobe, who, in a fatal stroke of retaliation by the gods, is turned into stone—transformed at once into the grief-stricken precipitate of mythic violence and into an enduring marker of the boundary between two separate and unequal worlds. From this tale, Benjamin unfolds an understanding of the border, not as the mere backdrop for the use of force nor as a territorial demarcation that states may justifiably defend, but as the very instantiation of legal violence (in its originary form). He contends, further, that establishing borders is a technic of ambiguity, designed to represent inequality as a single line that may not be transgressed, and produces, too, a nexus of guilt in relation to which one who “steps over” becomes fated to illegality and to the violence that the latter ostensibly warrants. In drawing attention to the inextricability of borders and the violence that they instantiate, and in exposing the identity between mythic retribution and Grenzsetzung (border-positing), Benjamin offers insight into current practices of criminalizing border crossers and militarizing borderlands. Some promise for the negation of the order that secures those who traverse the border as fatalities of law is found in the essay's final moments, when Benjamin imagines extralegal justice, or divine violence, as a de-creative force that annihilates the borders that confer the sentence of life-destroying guilt.

scholarly journals Law, Violence, History

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 330-337
Author(s):  
Pablo Oyarzún
Keyword(s):  
Legal Order ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Legal Violence ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Divine Violence ◽  
Violence History ◽  
Legal Forms ◽  
Critique Of Violence ◽  
Forms Of Violence

Abstract This article offers a reading of the concluding paragraph of Walter Benjamin's “Toward the Critique of Violence.” It discusses Benjamin's assertion that only a philosophical-historical approach can provide the key to a critique of violence in light of his essay's discussion of legal violence, and in light of his discovery of radically different types of violence. Benjamin argues that the legal order remains enclosed in a cycle of law-positing and law-preserving violence. Moreover, the legal order inherits the essential trait of myth and of mythic violence: ambiguity. This article shows that guilt is the destiny of those subjected to mythic (and legal) forms of violence. The fateful cycle of legal violence can be undone only by the irruption of an absolutely heterogeneous type of violence, which Benjamin calls divine violence. Its peculiarity consists in the fact that, in deposing legal violence (and the legal order as a whole), divine violence also deposes itself as violence. Although divine violence cannot be attested to as a fact or as a force unequivocally acting in the profane—that is, the human—context, it is nevertheless immanent to the profane world. Its immanence is the immanence of the messianic.

Critiquing Violence: Benjamin on Law and the Divine

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-45
Author(s):  
Gavin Rae
Keyword(s):  
Legal Framework ◽  
Fresh Start ◽  
Legal Violence ◽  
Ethics Of Responsibility ◽  
Divine Violence ◽  
Critique Of Violence ◽  
The Relationship

Focusing on Walter Benjamin’s famous critique of violence in his 1921 essay of the same title, this chapter argues that Benjamin’s distinction between divine and legal violence also points to two distinct forms of sovereignty, one internal to law and one external to it. With this, he disrupts the classic notion that sovereignty is indivisible. Tracing the relationship between the two forms demonstrates that Benjamin develops a sophisticated account of the relationship between law and violence, undermines the classic notion that violence is instrumental to (legal) sovereignty, and shows that divine sovereign violence can justifiably usurp legal sovereign violence, thereby offering the possibility of a fresh start. However, the chapter also notes the ambiguity in Benjamin’s account regarding whether divine violence can take on (non-divine) political significance to suggest that his appeal to divine violence is an attempt to develop a just order based on an ethics of responsibility, whereby he allows that we can confront legal sovereignty in the name of create a more just legal framework, but insists that we cannot ground that decision on a transcendent principle. It concludes that Benjamin’s point is that any challenge to legal sovereign violence must emanate from a pure decision that we take responsibility for.

scholarly journals Niobe and Korah, Different Orders of Time

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-305
Author(s):  
Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Violence ◽  
Moral World ◽  
Divine Violence ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Critique Of Violence

Abstract Walter Benjamin's critique of violence assumes that violence is deeply intertwined with the division of time and space. Niobe serves as an example that allows Benjamin to give an account of the violent conditions of the order of time that is constituted under the rule of law. The example of Korah helps to illustrate the difference between divine violence and legal violence and to underscore the centrality of time's passage for the moral world. Unlike in the example of Niobe, whose children are condemned to death as punishment for her guilt, the children of Korah receive a new life and do not have to make amends for the guilt of their parents. Bearing in mind Niobe's guilt and her serving as “a stone marking the border (Grenze) between human beings and gods,” and given that Korah's children are spared after Moses has received the commandments, we can think of the boundless destruction of boundaries as opening a new historical order of time and the hope for an overcoming of the anthropocentric logic according to which the positing of law is the positing of power.

Documentary Goes Popular

2019 ◽  
pp. 61-102
Author(s):  
Angela J. Aguayo
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
Documentary History ◽  
Creative Force ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

While the documentary genre has frequently been conceptualized as a democratic tool with civic potential, the ways popular advocacy documentary functions in the process of social change is unclear. We need more information about the relationship between documentary agitation and collective organizing for social change, as well as about how this function shifts with the visibility of popular attention. Mainstream commercial culture is more than at odds with a commons of democratic exchange. The advocacy film is a time-honored tradition in documentary history, made specifically for the aims of democratic exchange. This type of film is produced for political causes by activists or advocates who are not closely connected with the government or decision makers. Often the director is constructed as a central creative force. Central figures usually function as surrogates for the film in public interviews and engagements; the speakers are often connected to sponsoring organizations. In this chapter, I first address the historical linage of popular documentary and its movement from the vernacular to the popular. Then, I examine the ways popular advocacy documentary in popular form has morphed in recent years, providing insight into the potential of the genre to make contact with the political structure.

The Miracle of Generative Violence? René Girard and the Use of Force in International Law

2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 563-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
GREGOR NOLL
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
International Law ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
International Community ◽  
Security Strategy ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
National Security Strategy ◽  
Divine Violence ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn this article, I apply René Girard's theory of generative violence to the international law relating to the use of force. I argue that texts of international law make gestures of referral towards an immanent normativity on the fettering of divine violence. The means to this end is a form of sacrificial violence that seeks to promote the preservation and cohesion of the ‘international community’. The structuring of this violence through international law and its repeated staging reproduces the relationship of prophecy to miracle. Empirically, I draw mainly on excerpts from the 2006 US National Security Strategy.

Rwanda Revisited: unamir ii

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 77-94
Author(s):  
Lieutenant-General J.J. Frewen
Keyword(s):  
Use Of Force ◽  
Insight Into

In his article, John Frewen provides a first-hand account of his experience as the Australian contingent operations officer in Rwanda. In so doing he provides insight into the challenges that he and his fellow contingent members faced as they tried to conduct operations in a UN mission that was characterized as having a confused mandate, uncertain use of force authorizations, inadequate resourcing, and plagued by misjudgments as to the intentions of the main actors. A (and, indeed, the degree of respect they would afford the UN), failure of collective will, and misconceptions as to role, all played a part in unamir and unamir ii trying – often heroically – to act as ‘representatives of peace, where no true peace had yet settled

scholarly journals Using force: experiences of Belgian police officers

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jannie Noppe ◽  
Antoinette Verhage
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Physical Force ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Individual Coaching ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Insight Into

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the type of force that is most frequently used by Belgian police officers in their daily activities, and to examine the individual and contextual triggers that result in using force. Design/methodology/approach First, the results of an online survey of police officers in three Belgian local police zones are presented. Second, qualitative data are used to gain more insight into the factors, individual as well as contextual, that influence the decision to use force. Findings The survey results indicate that the officers in the sample rarely use force. When force is used, the type of force used is typically situated on the lower end of the continuum (verbal and physical force without a weapon). The interview data suggest that suspect resistance, the behaviour of the suspect in general and the character and personality of the police officer have an influence on the use of force. Practical implications The authors conclude that police officers should be provided not only with training on typical situations, but also with training to handle unpredictable cases, as well as individual coaching and aftercare. Increased transparency and reporting of the use of force and evolutions thereof could provide basic information to develop training, coaching and aftercare. Originality/value Although there has been plenty of academic attention given to the factors that determine proper use of force by the police, most research in this field is based on police experiences abroad (such as in the USA).

scholarly journals Pensar la violencia. Los lectores de Benjamín.

Sincronía ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol XXV (80) ◽  
pp. 28-82
Author(s):  
Jesús López Salas ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Final Solution ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Divine Violence ◽  
Violent Acts ◽  
Critique Of Violence

In what follows the reader will find an exposition of Benjamin's text For a Critique of Violence, the interpretation made by Derrida, Honneth, Žižek, among others, as well as Bernstein's comment on those readings. Derrida has associated the Benjamin text with the "final solution", grouping it into the forms of thought that justify or make possible acts similar to those facts. Honneth looks for an affable outlet, turning towards a proposal for a cultural revolution. Žižek associates the resentment that humans experience to explain historical events, which are examples of pure or divine violence, which are caused by love that seeks good. Bernstein will accept the reading of Derrida, which he considers a product of imagination. He appreciates Honneth's performance, he finds it enlightening. He rejects the idea of reducing guilt to the conscience of the person responsible for violent acts, who silently and autonomously judges himself for the acts committed, seems to him inadmissible; he considers that violence should be a community discussion supported by fallibilist pluralism.

Justice, Law, and the Educative Power: Revisiting ‘Force of Law’

Derrida Today ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-206
Author(s):  
Gabriel Quigley
Keyword(s):  
The Future ◽  
Divine Violence ◽  
Legal Space ◽  
The Law ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
The University ◽  
Critique Of Violence

This paper examines Jacques Derrida's analysis of Walter Benjamin's ‘Critique of Violence’ in the context of their respective theories of the university. Whereas Derrida foregrounds the complex ways that the university and law are intertwined, Benjamin claims that the ‘educative power’ stands removed from the law by identifying the university with ‘divine violence’. ‘Force of Law’ not only questions the possibility of a neutral, pre-legal space that Benjamin's theory warrants, ‘Force of Law’ also draws attention to the laws structuring the colloquia that gave rise to Derrida's text. This paper claims that Derrida's analysis of justice, law, violence, and justesse is thus informed by a theory of the university, and that the ways in which Derrida's theory of law stands opposed to Benjamin's parallels the ways in which Derrida's theory of the university questions Benjamin's understanding of the ‘educative power’. This paper concludes by drawing attention to the demand posed by the absence of justice in the academy. Although the laws of the academy produce justesse in the present, this negatively affirms justice in the future, which cannot wait.

Between Means and Ends: Reconstructing Coercion in Dewey's Democratic Theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 111 (3) ◽  
pp. 522-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDER LIVINGSTON
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Labor Politics ◽  
Means And Ends ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critique Of Violence ◽  
American Labor

John Dewey's democratic theory is celebrated as a classic statement of the theory of deliberative democracy. This article challenges deliberative appropriations of Dewey's political thought by situating his democratic theory within the contentious history of American labor politics. In his writings on direct action, strikes, and class struggle, Dewey advocated coercive and nondeliberative modes of political action as democratic means for democratic ends. Examining Dewey's writings on democracy, action, and the use of force reveals how a means-oriented pragmatism circumvents the problematic dichotomy of ideal ends and non-ideal means framing contemporary debates about idealism and realism in democratic theory. Pragmatism's account of the interdependence of means and ends in political action, as a process of creative and collaborative experimentation, combines a robust defense of coercive tactics with a consequentialist critique of violence.

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