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(Non)violence (LAW-DS-NONVIOL)

LAW-DS-NONVIOL

Description

Introduction
The seminar explores the relationship between (non)violence and the law. By the notion of “(non)violence” we seek to highlight the inherent (and dialectic) relationship between violent and non-violent forms of action, protest, resistance.

Most states go back to a form of violence (in achieving independence, unification, secession, revolution), and most contemporary states continue to rely on violence, or the threat thereof, both internally and externally. They even claim the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence. This latter claim entails, on the one hand, that the use of violence by the state is presumed to be legitimate while, on the other hand, the use of violence by others than state officials is presumed to be illegitimate.

Thus, a significant gap exists between state and non-state actors' capacity to justify violence. States can effectively claim that their violence is both legitimate and legal, whereas other actors struggle to establish the legitimacy of their use of violence. This gap reconfirms, time and again, states' privilege in framing their violence as both legal and legitimate, while dismissing that of non-state actors as lacking any legitimacy or legality.

State and non-state violence comes in different forms, physical force and verbal, actual and threatened (coercion). One salient instance of state violence is law enforcement. Criminal law, police, and prisons come to mind. However, private law enforcement equally relies on the backing of state violence. Contract, property, and tort law are enforced, respectively, through remedies for breach, evictions, and injunctions.

Should we – as lawyers, scholars, and citizens – take the legitimacy of state violence and the illegitimacy of non-state violence for granted? Or can non-state violence sometimes be legitimate, for example, as a response to illegitimate state violence? In particular, do the colonised, the oppressed, the marginalised, and the exploited have a right to use violence to free themselves from the violences of colonialism, oppression, marginalisation, and exploitation? Beyond legitimacy, can a just and peaceful society ever be based on organised violence? Should protest and liberation movements always remain non-violent, even in the face of brutal violence used against them? If so, why? Should people not belonging to colonised, oppressed, marginalised, or exploited groups exercise epistemic and moral humility when it comes to answering such questions? Do the terms ‘violence’, ‘force’, and ‘coercion’ refer ultimately to the same thing (in all languages) or is their relationship more complex? And how can we explain the inherent relation between violence and the law, given the difficulty in defining violence, which renders it an impossible, if not senseless, category for the law?

These and other questions will be central to this seminar. Core themes will include decolonisation, revolution, resistance, and political protest. Our discussions will centre on classical and more recent texts on (non)violence. Although the reading list does not include works by legal scholars, the seminar aims to connect the readings through our discussion with very concrete and practical questions about the role and rule of law – and the position of (legal) scholars – concerning state and non-state violence. Thus, the seminar seeks overlapping encounters between law and philosophy, theory and praxis, and different views on violence/nonviolence exercised and faced by the law.
 
No specific prior knowledge is required. Participants from all departments are welcome.

Core readings

• Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation [1919]
• Walter Benjamin, Critique of Violence [1921]
• Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth [1961] (Penguin Books 2001) ch 1
• INCITE!, Statement on Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex (2001) (https://incite-national.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/incite-cr-statement.pdf)
• Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind (Verso 2020)
• Elsa Dorlin, Self Defence: A Philosophy of Violence (Verso 2022) Ch 2 & 4

You are welcome to read any of the texts in another language, be it the original or another translation.


First, Second & Third Term: registration from 22 to 26 September 2025.

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