Violence: thinking without banisters

We live in a time when we are overwhelmed with talk and images of violence. Whether on television, the internet, films or the video screen, we can't escape representations of actual or fictional violence - another murder, another killing spree in a high school or movie theatre, another action movie filled with images of violence. Our age could well be called "The Age of Violence" because representations of real or imagined violence, sometimes fused together, are pervasive. But what do we mean by violence? What can violence achieve? Are there limits to violence and, if so, what are they?

Cover; Dedication; Title page; Copyright page; Acknowledgments; Preface; Introduction; Chapter 1 The Aporias of Carl Schmitt; The Ambiguous Legacy of Carl Schmitt; The Political: The Friend/Enemy Distinction; Political Enmity; Politics as Destiny; Schmitt's Aporia; Decision out of Nothingness?; Violence; Conventional, Real, and Absolute Enmity; Schmitt's Amoral Moralism; Chapter 2 Walter Benjamin: Divine Violence?; The Political Context; Law-Making and Law-Preserving Violence; The Revolutionary Strike; Manifestation; Marcuse's Interpretation of Divine Violence

Butler and Critchley on Divine ViolenceŽižek on Divine Violence; Derrida's Deconstruction of Benjamin's Essay; Rose's Response to Derrida; The Undecidability of Divine Violence; Nervousness about Divine Violence; The Seductive Allure of Benjamin's Essay; Chapter 3 Hannah Arendt: On Violence and Power; The Historical Setting; The Antithesis of Power and Violence; What is Arendt Doing?; The Revolutionary Spirit; Fabrication and Violence; Terror and Violence; The Justification of Violence; Arendt's Exaggerated Thinking; The Relevance of Arendt; Power, Violence, and the "Real World"

Chapter 4 Frantz Fanon's Critique of Violenc…