Texts on Violence: Of the Impure (Contaminations, Equivocations, Trembling)

This article interrogates a certain philosophical scene – one which constitutes itself through the position of what Jacques Derrida calls “the ethical instance of violence.” In the course of the essay, I analyze this quasi-juridical scene through readings of Aristotle, Walter Benjamin, and Giorgio Agamben among others. The scene, built on texts on texts on violence, demands a logic of purity; it is wary of contaminations and equivocations. And yet it thrives on them. In analyzing the implications of text, writing, and trace for the philosophical discourse on violence, I follow Derrida “just to see” what could make the scene tremble.