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Published as Chapter 4 in States of Violence: War, Capital Punishment, and Letting Die, Austin Sarat & Jennifer L. Cuthbert, eds.
This Chapter examines a complement to the concept of the state’s monopoly of legitimate violence, what I call a ‘monopoly of sacrifice.’ It describes some of the difficulties the United States government has confronted in authoritatively designating which and whose losses and deaths in the name of the nation are considered transcendent or sacred. Through detailed case studies, it describes a state that uses legal form and policy to construe certain deaths as sacrificial, and others as banal, and then explores some of the challenges these designations encounter as non-state actors - Iraqi insurgents, private military contractors, American mothers of soldiers, and detainees - purport to have direct access to sacrificial action and sovereign meanings. Each of these cases illustrates not simply that an ex ante governmental designation is vulnerable to challenge, but the particular role of sacrifice in initiating such a challenge.
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Publication Date
2009
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
City
New York
ISBN
9780521876278
First Page
83
Last Page
126
Keywords
sacrifice, sovereignty, privatization, violence
Disciplines
Law
Required Text
This material has been published in States of Violence: War, Capital Punishment, and Letting Die edited by Austin Sarat & Jennifer L. Cuthbert. This version is free to view and download for personal use only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works. © Cambridge University Press 2009.
Recommended Citation
Mateo Taussig-Rubbo, Sacrifice and Sovereignty in States of Violence: War, Capital Punishment, and Letting Die 83 (Austin Sarat & Jennifer L. Cuthbert, eds., Cambridge University Press 2009)