Sovereign violence is shared by citizens as a right to punish outsiders

Evidence

Wherever sovereign power is exercised, and whether or not the performances of sovereignty are spectacular and public as they were in the Amritsar massacre or appear as ‘scientific/technical rationalities of management and punishment of bodies,’ as I shall argue they are in terror arrests and security certificate hearings, such power remains embedded in the idea of the citizen and thus in the boundary between members of political community and those outside of it. Violence is ‘fetishized as a weapon of reason and preservation of freedom of the citizens vis-à-vis the threats from outsiders, from internal enemies, and from those not yet fit for citizenship – slaves and colonial subjects.’ Sovereignty thus becomes ‘embodied in citizens sharing territory and culture, and sharing the right to punish strangers.’ — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 51

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Sovereignty reimagined as a right distributed across the citizenry to punish non-members — this reframes political violence as a collective entitlement rather than a top-down act.
• XREF: connects to: Conceptions of liberty are themselves constituted through violence. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1828