ABSTRACT
Some violence is called political and some is not. Sometimes we are called upon to condemn murder as ideological and depraved for its invocation of another symbolic order, and at other times we are enjoined to celebrate it. But, whether we call violence political or not, the intersections between violence and politics inform our systems of memory, language and governance. If we think about what the arguments of this book might mean for the study of political violence, of international relations and of conflict, they point towards the practices of making and remaking the world. Systems of language, politics and law are founded upon violence — not just because they rely upon the threat of coercion, and not just because they emerged from violent contestation and later obscure that heritage. Law-founding violence disrupts one hermeneutical horizon and institutes another, around which systems of language, thought and rule are implemented. The prefiguration of these discourses within violence speaks to the complete overlap between politics and violence, contra liberal understandings of an instrumental force.
