Blood Work Slouching Towards A Critique of Violence
Oct 15, 2025
A close reading of Walter Benjamin's essay on how violence shapes law, politics, and authority. Translation choices and historical context in postwar Germany get unpacked. The discussion contrasts types of violence, from state force and policing to mythic and divine violence. Nonviolent 'pure means' and the search for an exit from cycles of law-creating violence are highlighted.
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Why General Strikes Terrify The State
- The strike reveals why the state tolerates some violence: acceptable strikes modify legal relations, but the general strike threatens the legal order itself and is met with hostility.
- Benjamin shows the state tolerates bounded labor violence but suppresses any exercise that could re-found legal authority.
War As Law Positing And Preserving
- War functions both as law-positing (establishing new legal orders via victory) and law-preserving (defensive violence to uphold the existing order).
- Benjamin ties war to the outlaw figure: victory certifies new law, while defense reveals the state's need to justify preservation by force.
Law Presents Itself As Fate And Creates Exceptions
- Benjamin argues positive law presents itself as safeguarding a single fate, making legal authority feel like destiny and rendering challenges impotent unless they attack the legal order itself.
- This explains why deterrence fails: law's threatening character requires indeterminacy to respond to any threat, producing a self-justifying exception.
