The primary purpose of this seminar course is to explore the ways in which the relationship between violence and politics is conceptualised within modern and contemporary political thought.

This course will explore the relationship between and violence and politics through a close and critical reading of some the key texts within modern and contemporary political thought. Particular attention will be paid to the following questions: Should we look at the relationship between violence and politics from the perspective of the state or from that of the oppressed? Is violence a necessary aspect of politics? Should we see violence as a justified response to oppression and injustice? Is violence antithetical to politics or constitutive of it? Is assimilation a form of violence? Among the thinkers/writers to be studied are Freud, Sartre, Robespierre, Sorel, Benjamin, Derrida, Schmitt, Fanon and Arendt.