A MACHINE FOR GRINDING PEOPLE: THE PROBLEM OF THE AMBIGUOUS RELATION BETWEEN LAW AND VIOLENCE

• Autor(a) principal: Magalhães, José Antonio Rego
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Magalhães, Juliana Neuenschwander
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista da Faculdade de Direito UFPR (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://revistas.ufpr.br/direito/article/view/47476
• topic: Direito; Filosofia do direito.; Jacques Derrida. Walter Benjamin. Violência. Autos de resistência.; Law.; Jacques Derrida. Walter Benjamin. Violence. Autos de resistência.

The goal of this paper is to show, mainly through the work of Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, a certain ambiguity in the relation between the concepts of law and violence, and to pose it as a problem, yet the solution to this problem is not to be reached in this paper, needing to be developed elsewhere. First we will present the concept of violence as problematic, distinguishing it from other issues such as power and force. Through Benjamin, we will present the distinction between means and ends as thought by legal positivism and natural law, as well as the distinction established by the author between the violence that institutes law and the one which maintains it. We will exemplify those questions through a brief discussion of the police institution and of the “autos de resistência”. Next, we will show the reasons why Benjamin ends up condemning legal power, seeing in it a vicious circularity, in light of which it shows itself as an immediate manifestation of violence, called by the author “mythic” violence. We will end this paper with a brief suggestion about the possibility of thinking a solution to the established problem.