Citation

Menke C. Law Lit. 2010; 22(1): 1-17.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, University of California Press)

DOI

10.1525/lal.2010.22.1.1

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The relationship between law and violence is paradoxically structured: law is the opposite of violence, since legal forms of decision-making disrupt the spell of violence generating more violence. At the same time, law is itself a kind of violence; because it imposes a judgment that determines its "subject" like a curse. This article reads tragedy (notably Aesychylus's Oresteia and Sophocles' King Oedipus) as articulating this paradoxical entwinement between law and violence and uses this tragic insight for a critical discussion of Benjamin's "Critique of Violence."