ANTH 137. Law and Violence


This seminar explores a question that has been central to both anthropology and critical legal studies: What is the relation between law and violence? Is law really the opposite of violence when the state relies on "legal violence" to enforce its own laws? Our exploration of the thorny question of "legal violence" is situated within a particular trajectory of social, political, and anthropological thought, perhaps best articulated in Walter Benjamin's 1921 essay, "Critique of Violence," a cryptic yet influential text in which the German thinker formulated the idea that violence is constitutive rather than antithetical to law. Our goal is to take a closer look at the ways in which law is entwined with violence and explore how, although formulated one hundred years ago, Benjamin's argument remains critical for contemporary debates about police violence as well as critiques of liberal democracy and capitalism. In this seminar, students can expect to engage closely with works in anthropology, philosophy, political theory, and legal studies alongside art and film exploring the relation between law and violence as well as recent writing in different genres by feminist, queer, and thinkers of color who further expand and challenge how we think and act in relation to the law and its violence. This course is suited for students interested in law, anthropology, and social theory as well as students interested in the relation between theory and social change.
Social sciences.
2 credit.
Spring 2024. Azuero-Quijano.
Catalog chapter: Sociology and Anthropology  
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/sociology-anthropology


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