ABSTRACT
This chapter considers one such forum – the UN Security Council – which has evolved over time into perhaps the most potent symbol of legally sanctioned state violence in international relations, not least because of its botched attempts to curb wars and punish war crimes. It argues that, while 'dealing with' but also perpetrating and perpetuating multiple forms of violence, this event, at the same time, reveals some productive voids, especially with regard to the dominant framing of the subjectivities and subjects of the international legal discourse and intervention. The couplet of law and violence is thus forever entangled in a double bind: a distressing existential drama that both threatens and makes the relationship possible. Out of an array of critical engagements on the political Left with violence as a social phenomenon, two analytical encounters are almost proverbial for their depth and the number of productive responses they were able to elicit.
