Undoing legal violence: Walter Benjamin's and Giorgio Agamben's aesthetics of pure means

Abstract

Giorgio Agamben calls for a playful relation to law as a way to counteract its inherent violence. Such a relation would prevent law from functioning as a means to an end, instead treating it as a pure means. This article evaluates the significance of Agamben's proposal and of the concept of pure means, arguing that both implicitly draw on a Kantian model of aesthetic experience.

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Benjamin Morgan
West Chester University

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Breaking billboards: protest and a politics of play.Nazlı Konya - 2021 - Contemporary Political Theory 20 (2):250-271.

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