ABSTRACT
The problem with the Infinite Justice is then, as Jacques Rancière has pointed out,2 that it means justice without limits. It’s justice that ignores all the distinctions by which its practice is traditionally delimited: it is impossible to distinguish any more legal punishment from the vengeance of individuals, when all the barriers which were separating the law from politics, ethics or religion have been erased. That’s why, for Rancière, there was no language excess: ‘“Infinite justice”
states exactly what’s at stake: the assertion of a right identical to the omnipotence hitherto reserved for the vindictive God. All traditional distinctions end up being abolished with the erasure of international forms of law.’3 Of course this erasure is already the principle of terrorist action itself, but fighting back in the same terrain as your enemy as it has already been determined, leads easily to the vicious circle in which you are beginning to look more and more like your enemy. This current international political situation is characterized by what
Rancière calls ‘the excess of ethics over law and politics’.4 For some time now this rise of ethics to the detriment of justice has characterized the forms by which the Western powers have intervened abroad. This blurring of the limits between ethics and politics has taken on the form of the humanitarian military intervention. The principle behind this is revealed by the figure of the absolute victim, a victim of infinite evil. Not only are there nowadays suffering victims everywhere – ‘everybody is somebody’s victim’ is a good motto for our politically correct time – but there has to be also the absolute victim of infinite evil which grounds this whole edifice and legitimizes every military action taking place in any corner of the world:
The obligation of attending to the victims of absolute Evil has become identical to the fight without limits against this evil. And this is identified with deploying unlimited military power, acting like a global police force in charge of restoring order to every part of the world where Evil can find shelter.5
