Law in the Flesh: Tracing Legitimation\u27s Origin to The Act of Killing?

A proper respect for civil order does not mandate the elision of political violence. To the contrary, civility requires that we explore the exercise of violence at the beginning of state sovereignty. To forget, or repress, originary violence invites its return. That is why, with its insistence upon rational calculation and the neutralization of desire, the vast cleanup operation of liberal theory is bound to fail

Too Late for Thinking: The Curious Quest for Emancipatory Potential in Meaningless Affect and Some Jurisprudential Implications

The “affective turn” presents a number of important challenges to law and the humanities. One such challenge concerns our ability to resist the temptation to romanticize the inhuman. Theorists from Nietzsche to Massumi have been so taken by the emancipatory promise of affective intensity that they risk relinquishing responsibility for freedom’s necessary social, political, and legal pre-conditions. Our responsibility for narrative construction and narrative choice carries with it an ethical imperative to understand the orchestration of affect. Downplaying the importance of reflective consciousness (including our capacity for prudent judgment) in favor of spontaneous affective events threatens to rob freedom of its meaning and open democratic societies to grave risks