Violence and Raciality: Toward an ‘Ethics With/out the Subject’

Abstract

This article argues that an analysis of the operations of raciality requires a description of violence whose interpretive ground is not sustained by the individual subject. By drawing on the work of Denise Ferreira da Silva, Stefano Harney, Fred Moten and others, I suggest such a description might prove a disruptive mechanism in the capacity for raciality to function as both authorizing force and the conditions of existence. In doing so, I expand on existing scholarly work that identifies manifold failings in post-enlightenment thinking and its tethering of racial subjugation to selfhood, sovereignty and agency. Moreover, I demonstrate why ethico-juridical interpretations of violence against nonwhite subjects consistently fail to identify its authorizing force, raciality.