Self Defense  


Self Defense
Verso Books | September 27, 2022 | 273 pages
ISBN: 9781839761058

A brilliant study of violent self-defense in the struggle for liberation by an award-winning philosopher Is violent self-defense ethical? In the history of colonialism, racism, sexism, capitalism, there has long been a dividing line between bodies "worthy of defending" and those who have been disarmed and rendered defenseless. In 1685, for example, France's infamous "Code Noir" forbade slaves from carrying weapons, under penalty of the whip. In nineteenth-century Algeria, the colonial state outlawed the use of arms by Algerians, but granted French settlers the right to bear arms.