Abstract
Discussing Benjamin’s concepts of pure means and divine violence, this article poses the question of how we can think of a realm of revolutionary politics outside and beyond of the law - a sphere of justice and non-legal violence. For Benjamin, it was clear that there was something fundamentally “rotten in the law” - be it the law of monarchy, western democracy or autocratic regimes. The violence inherent to the law contradicts itself since law enforcement - e.g. the police - always blurs the line between law-preserving and law-making violence. Conversely, most attempts to break the law and its supporting powers lead to the establishment of a new law. Against the “mythic” cycle of law-making and law-preserving violence/power (“Gewalt”) Benjamin searches for a nonviolent, pure violence that could interrupt the application of law to life. This article argues that Werner Hamacher’s reading of Benjamin’s essay as “afformative” provides a possible structure to understand Benjamin’s paradoxical notion of “pure means”.
Keywords:
Law; Pure Means; Walter Benjamin