Enemies of All Humankind: Fictions of Legitimate ViolenceGendered Asylum: Race and Violence in U.S. Law and Politics

Abstract

Book Review| March 01 2020 Enemies of All Humankind: Fictions of Legitimate ViolenceGendered Asylum: Race and Violence in U.S. Law and Politics Enemies of All Humankind: Fictions of Legitimate Violence. By Schillings, Sonja. Lebanon, NH: Dartmouth College Press. 2017. xi, 287 pp. Cloth, $95.00; paper, $40.00; e-book, $7.99.Gendered Asylum: Race and Violence in U.S. Law and Politics. By McKinnon, Sara L. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press. 2016. vii, 165 pp. Cloth, $95.00; paper, $25.00; e-book, $14.95. Claudia Sadowski-Smith Claudia Sadowski-Smith Claudia Sadowski-Smith is the author of The New Immigrant Whiteness: Neoliberalism, Race, and Post-Soviet Migration to the United States (2018) and Border Fictions: Globalization, Empire, and Writing at the Boundaries of the United States (2008). She is also the editor of Globalization on the Line: Culture, Capital, and Citizenship at U.S. Borders (2002) as well as of two special journal issues, one on postsocialist literatures in the United States and the other on comparative border studies. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Literature (2020) 92 (1): 162–164. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-8056644 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Claudia Sadowski-Smith; Enemies of All Humankind: Fictions of Legitimate ViolenceGendered Asylum: Race and Violence in U.S. Law and Politics. American Literature 1 March 2020; 92 (1): 162–164. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-8056644 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsAmerican Literature Search Advanced Search The two monographs under review signal the renewal of scholarly interest in intersections between legal and cultural forms of representation. Rather than drawing on the existing interdisciplinary fields of critical legal studies or critical race theory, however, these two authors construct their own divergent approaches to the study of representation/discourse and the law.Divided into five parts and thirteen chapters, Schillings’s lengthy book explores the evolution of the concept of hostis humani generis (the enemy of all humankind) in philosophical and literary texts, such as in treatises on piracy and in novels by James Fenimore Cooper, Dashiell Hammett, Richard Wright, Kurt Vonnegut, and Mohsin Hamid. Developed by philosopher Augustine of Hippo and jurist Hugo Grotius, who both also contributed to just war theory, the concept of hostis humani generis, Schillings argues, serves as a kind of legal fiction to justify the violence... Copyright © 2020 by Duke University Press2020 Issue Section: Book Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.