Introduction: Violence and Critique

The questions of violence, justice and judgment define one of the most resonant and constant concerns of contemporary thought. In part, this is only a reflection of what are often called the "realities on the ground" (the intonation is, of course, that to pursue these questions as questions is already to be "in the air" or "in the clouds"). In the few years of this century the logic of violence, and even its aestheticisation – whether as terror or as "shock and awe," or in the citizen's daily vocation to be "alert but not alarmed" – have become the familiar data of current experience.