Colonial violence stood inside the law, not outside it

Evidence

The political theorist Achille Mbembe argues that colonized territories are the location where sovereignty essentially consists in the exercise of a power outside the law, where “peace” is in effect a continuous and unending war, and where European rulers could decide upon matters of life and death absolutely: “the sovereign right to kill is not subject to any rule in the colonies.” Colonialism’s destructive forces were not, Mbembe argues, limited to pacification and forced cultural assimilation; they consisted in the sovereign right to kill the subject populations at will. Mbembe’s account is eminently insightful, but he assumes too much when he speaks of such colonial practices as standing outside the law. Being inherently instrumentalist, modern law is capable of adjusting to any situation at will, making exceptional measures integral not only to it but also to its normative mode. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 411

Categorization

• XREF: Engages Mbembe’s necropolitics; reframes it against an instrumentalist theory of law. — connects to: Colonial land appropriation was framed as consent with violence as alternative — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 300
• DEEPTHINKING: Inverts the common critical trope that colonial rule was lawless: law’s instrumentality makes colonial exception its normative heart.