Self-Defense

A Philosophy of Violence

Elsa Dorlin, Kieran Aarons

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English

Verso Books
29 November 2022

Deconstructionism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism; Social & political philosophy; Popular philosophy

Is violent self-defense ethical? In

the history of colonialism, racism, sexism, capitalism, there has long

been a dividing line between bodies ""worthy of defending"" and those who

have been disarmed and rendered defenseless. In 1685, for example,

France's infamous ""Code Noir"" forbade slaves from carrying weapons,

under penalty of the whip. In nineteenth-century Algeria, the colonial

state outlawed the use of arms by Algerians, but granted French settlers

the right to bear arms. Today, some lives are seen to be worth so

little that Black teenagers can be shot in the back for appearing

""threatening"" while their killers are understood, by the state, to be

justified. That those subject to the most violence have been forcibly

made defenseless raises, for any movement of liberation, the question of

using violence in the interest of self-defense.

Here, philosopher Elsa Dorlin looks across the global history of the left - from slave revolts to the knitting women of the French Revolution and British suffragists' training in ju-jitsu,

from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to the Black Panther Party, from queer

neighborhood patrols to Black Lives Matter - to trace the politics,

philosophy, and ethics of self defense. In this history she finds a

""martial ethics of the self"": a practice in which violent self defense

is the only means for the oppressed to ensure survival and to build a liveable future. In this sparkling and provocative book, drawing on theorists from Thomas Hobbes to Fred Hampton, Frantz Fanon to Judith Butler, Michel Foucault to June Jordan, Dorlin has reworked the very idea of modern governance and political subjectivity.

Translated from the French by Kieran Aarons.

By: Elsa Dorlin
Translated by: Kieran Aarons
Imprint: Verso Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 210mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 249g
ISBN: 9781839761058
ISBN 10: 1839761059
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 29 November 2022
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Elsa Dorlin is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, and the author of The Matrix of Race: A Sexual and Colonial Genealogy of the French Nation and Sex, Genre, and Sexualities: Introduction to Feminist Theory. This is her first book to be translated into English.