On violence, revolution and the self

Abstract

This article examines the integral relationship between epistemic violence and power, specifically at the level of the conception of the individual subject in law. The analysis highlights how the assumptions that underpin the notion of the subject within liberal individualism are constituted by a normalised racial and civilisational order, limiting the possibility of revolution. Illustrating how these limits operate through a discussion of Hannah Arendt’s essay On Violence and her treatment of the question of the subject, this article argues that revolution requires an alternative, or non-liberal, conception of the subject. The article engages with alternatives to pre-existing notions of the liberal subject proposed by two critical postcolonial intellectuals, Frantz Fanon and his contemporary, Ali Shari’ati. Such alternative articulations of subjectivity have implications for how both violence and revolution are understood, as well as for advancing the postcolonial project of dismantling Empire through the foregrounding of non-liberal epistemes.