Towards the Critique of Violence

Brendan Moran is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calgary, Canada.Carlo Salzani is a translator and author based in Münster, Germany and editor, with Brendan Moran, of Philosophy and Kafka (2013).

• AbbreviationsThe ContributorsIntroduction: On the Actuality of the ‘Critique of Violence’Brendan Moran and Carlo SalzaniPart I: Benjamin’s Critique of Violence1. Techniques of Agreement, Diplomacy, Lying Bettine Menke2. The Ambiguity of Ambiguity in Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’, Alison Ross3. Benjamin’s Niobe, Amir Ahmadi4. Nature, Decision, and Muteness, Brendan Moran5. Variations of Fate Antonia BirnbaumPart II: Agamben’s Readings of Benjamin6. From Benjamin’s bloßes Leben to Agamben’s nuda vita: A Genealogy, Carlo Salzani7. Agamben’s Critique of Sacrificial Violence, J. Colin McQuillan8. Agamben, Benjamin and the Indifference of Violence, William Watkin9. Suchness and the Threshold between Possession and Violence, Paolo Bartoloni10. Violence Without Law? On Pure Violence as a Destituent Power, Thanos Zartaloudis11. The Anarchist Life we are Already Living: Benjamin and Agamben on Bare Life and the Resistance to Sovereignty, James R. Martel12. Benjamin and Agamben on Kafka, Judaism and the Law, Vivian Liska13. Expropriated Experience: Agamben Reading Benjamin, Reading Kant Alex MurrayAppendixOn the Limits of Violence Giorgio AgambenIndex

Agamben's relationship with Walter Benjamin is decisive and yet complex, and this is above all the case for Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence,' a dense text in its own right. In this volume centered on Benjamin's 'Critique' and Agamben's reading of it, the authors make significant contributions to our understanding of a text that has attained an urgent 'legibility' in the present moment and of a contemporary intellectual project that at once extends and betrays it.