Violence

“THE first commandment of violence is that it precede power; the second, that it pose as power’s last resort. Because the last resort is always exceptional—we were left with no other choice—violence is presumed to be atypical.”

“Violence is a final recourse that portends its future form; it is a constant, demarcated not through history but through its outlines.”

“If the body is a site of accumulation for state-sponsored violence, execution is doubly negating, designed to both nullify deviant bodies and to erase all records of state-sponsored harm.”

“It makes no sense to speak of violence in our time when violence has been systematically enacted across time. Violence cannot be flattened. The best we can do is render its current form and try to discern patterns, as our writers have done in these pages.”

“If violence precedes power, we should study its contemporary articulations to anticipate where this power might lie in the future. Then, when the moment is right, we’ll seize it.”