Divine violence as non-violent violence: A critique of Judith Butler

The question of violence and how society can emancipate oneself from it has occupied many philosophers. Walter Benjamin attempted to answer this question in 1920 through the notion of divine violence. This idea has recently been resurrected by philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, Slavoj Žižek and Judith Butler. Divine violence is turned to as a means of emancipating society from systemic oppression and coercive law. However, it is a notion that has been met by major critiques. Most notable is Jacques Derrida’s critique given in Force of Law: The Mystical Foundations of Authority. This article examines Judith Butler’s turn to divine violence in opposition to the critique of divine violence given by Derrida. Butler attempts to merge divine violence and non-violence to create a means of non-violent revolution capable of emancipating society from oppression and coercive law. However, to make this argument, Butler needs to overcome Derrida’s objection that suggests that divine violence is a dangerous notion with the potential to justify horrendous forms of political violence. Does Butler successfully create a non-violent divine violence capable of achieving this desired emancipation? Or does divine violence continue to be a notion with a dangerously destructive potential as Derrida suggests? These are the questions that this article attempts to answer through a detailed examination of both Butler’s and Derrida’s work on divine violence. Ultimately, it is established that divine violence should be jettisoned into the realm of the divine, rather than harnessed for political ends.

divine violence is one that is inadequate and incomplete. Butler will be shown to misuse Benjamin's notion of divine violence as she euphemises or sanitises divine violence by suggesting that it is non-violent violence. I argue that Walter Benjamin's original notion of divine violence was intended to be not only violent, but utterly annihilating.
It is pertinent to begin with a brief examination of Benjamin's "Critique of violence". This will allow for an excavation of crucial terms such as justice, mythic violence and divine violence. It will also serve as a foundation throughout the text as I evaluate Butler's turn toward divine violence. Benjamin begins his critique by outlining the differences between the manner in which violence is interpreted in natural law and positive law. Violence in natural law is seen to be treated as a mere end. Thus, violence can be justified so long as this violence brings about a just end. The opposite is the case with positive law. In positive law, Benjamin suggests that violence is treated as a means. Thus, positive law focuses on the legality of violence as a means to be able to ensure that the end which is produced is just. Positive law aims to restrict the use of violence by the individual while simultaneously protecting violence as a mechanism of the state. Ultimately, neither natural law nor positive law provides a justification of violence that addresses violence as both a means and an end. Violence within these two systems of law can never be interpreted as a "pure means" (Benjamin 1996). Positive law is blind to violence as an end, while natural law is blind to violence as a means. Benjamin turns to positive law as his major concern. The examination of positive law enables Benjamin to further investigate how violence is either sanctioned or unsanctioned by the state. The law and the state combine to legitimise or delegitimise certain types of violence. In this examination, Benjamin illuminates the inherent link between law and the state. The ultimate aim for Benjamin is to discover a force that goes beyond the means or ends restriction of violence within the law as he attempts to undermine the legal sanctioning of violence and the authority of the state in general.
Through the examination of positive law, Benjamin suggests that the law is threatened by violence. This is due to the law founding property of violence that is an eternal possibility (Benjamin 1996). Benjamin suggests that the legal system protects itself from violence in the hands of the individual as it is this violence that has the potential to threaten the system (Rae 2019). The justification of violence within the legal system is unsatisfactory for Benjamin as the system is unable to judge violence itself. The legal system instead judges what violence is able to achieve in a given situation. Thus, the system does not allow for a judgment of the morality of violence itself. Benjamin argues that this is the cause of the inability to know whether violence has the ability to be moral or even extra-moral (Morgan 2007). It is here that Benjamin begins with his characterisation of mythic violence. Mythic violence for Benjamin is a term used to describe the violence that is inherent and pervasive in the modern state. It is the violence that permeates through to the foundations of the state and, in particular, the legal system. Benjamin examines the law as violence. In doing so, Benjamin begins the decoupling of justice and the law. Mythic violence has two branches embedded in it. The first branch of mythic violence is law-founding or law-making violence, which Benjamin (1996, 248) describes as [f]or the function of violence in law-making is twofold, in the sense that law-making pursues as its end, with violence as the means, what is to be established as law, but at the moment of instatement does not dismiss violence; rather, at this very moment of law-making, it specifically establishes as law not an end unalloyed by violence, but one necessarily and intimately bound to it, under the title of power.
Here, it is law-founding or law-making violence that legitimises and creates power for the state. Benjamin appeals to the myth of Niobe to argue that this law-founding violence not only establishes law, but it simultaneously establishes guilt (Benjamin 1996). Moreover, law-founding violence indicates that the law is not founded in justice as it claims, rather it is founded in violence. Thus, Benjamin questions the justness of law. This is a critique that Derrida will elaborate on.
The second arm of mythic violence is described by Benjamin as law-preserving violence. This is the violence that is committed by the state to protect its power. A common example of a form of law-preserving violence is the police force. The police are able to use state-sanctioned violence in situations to protect the legitimacy of the state. This is a common response to forms of protests in modern states that begin to threaten the state itself. The protests are deemed to be violent and unsanctioned; this allows for the sanctioning of police violence to protect the state. It is these two forms of violence that fall under the title of mythic violence. As Benjamin (1996, 249) suggests, "the mythic manifestation of immediate violence shows itself fundamentally identical with all legal violence". Benjamin adopts a Hermann Cohen definition of myth as a bastardising influence of nature onto human society (Müller 2003). For Benjamin, mythic violence is violence that is corrupted to create or recreate the ends and means continuum of law. Thus, mythic violence is a set of means that seeks to create false ends that everyone must obey. It is this bastardisation of violence that Benjamin describes as mythic (Martel 2014). Furthermore, mythic violence is a form of violence that is "fated". By describing mythic violence as fated, Benjamin suggests that this violence is inescapable. Thus, Benjamin claims that mythic violence is something that will constantly reappear in society (Benjamin 1996). This illuminates the mythical foundations of authority, which Benjamin seeks to undermine and gain emancipation from. It is only through divine violence that this emancipation can be gained.
Divine violence by Benjamin's definition opposes everything mythic. As Benjamin (1996, 249) suggests, [i]f mythic violence is law-making, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them; if mythic violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates; if the former threatens, the latter strikes; if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood.
Divine violence has the ability to not only go beyond the ends/means continuum described above, but destroy it completely. It is divine violence that can result in the emancipation of society from the inherent violence of law and the totalising nature of sovereignty. For Benjamin, mythic violence and divine violence have completely opposing logics. It is this opposition to mythic violence that piques Butler's interest in divine violence. Benjamin gives a few examples of divine violence, including that of the biblical myth of Korah. In the example of Korah, we see that divine violence can be utterly annihilating as Korah's community is engulfed by the earth. There are several different forms that divine violence can take in the profane world. The first type of divine violence that is found in the mundane world is that of pure immediate violence. Benjamin suggests that there is violence that exists outside of mythic law that one can see. That violence is pure immediate violence (Ferris 2008). This type of violence is crucial, since if it exists, then one can conceive of divine violence in the form of a general strike more convincingly. Immediate violence is an interesting concept as one can have a very clear notion of what it is when examining anger. When acting with anger, one tends to act without processing the consequences of the action. Thus, immediate violence is used as an example of violence without an end in mind, or as a pure means. It will therefore fall out of the ends/ means continuum described above. It is upon this notion of pure immediate violence that Benjamin tries to show that a general strike, mentioned in Georges Sorel's "Reflections on violence", can in fact take place. Sorel creates two categories of the general strike. Benjamin addresses these two forms directly in "Critique of violence". The two forms are distinguished by Sorel in the form of the proletariat general strike and the political general strike. Benjamin (1996, 246) explains that [t]he political general strike demonstrates how the state will lose none of its strength, how power is transferred from the privileged to the privileged, how the mass of producers will change their masters. In contrast to this political general strike (which incidentally seems to have been summed up by the abortive German revolution), the proletarian general strike sets itself the sole task of destroying state power.
Thus, the proletarian general strike mentioned above is anarchistic and the political general strike is law-founding. It is this anarchistic proletariat general strike that Benjamin is interested in as he sees it as a form of divine violence. It is through the proletarian general strike that humans are able to self-emancipate. For both Benjamin and Sorel, the proletarian general strike is violent by definition (Meisel 1950;Sorel 1999). However, the proletarian general strike is described by Benjamin as a pure means. This allows for the proletarian general strike to be law-destroying and emancipatory.
This notion of divine violence is what comes under scrutiny throughout this article. It is this notion that Butler sanitises to argue that divine violence is non-violent.
Derrida's critique of divine violence is founded on his disentanglement of justice and law. The disentanglement of justice from law illuminates that we have made what is strong just. This occurs through the law-founding violence described above. The law is created not through legitimisation from justice, but through the bastardisation of violence in the form of mythic violence. For Derrida, justice is seen to be unknowable, which is exemplified by the Derridian phrase "and yet" (Zacharias 2007). "And yet" describes the constant waiting, but never arriving, attribute of justice. Likened to the wait for the arrival of Godot, justice has a character of never arriving (Martel 2011). This Godotian characteristic of justice is due to three aporias identified by Derrida. The initial aporia is located in the notion of free decision. To act justly, one ought to have the freedom to do so. However, Derrida suggests that one can never know whether one is acting within a set of rules, or reacting to a set of rules. When acting within a set of rules, the decisions that one makes are not free but calculated. Therefore, one can never know if one is acting justly, or merely following a set of rules (Derrida 2002). This initial aporia of justice is troubling since it means that one cannot act justly by performing a duty. Is it not possible to commit a just act when following rules or one's duty? Surely, one can perceive of a situation in which by performing one's duty, one acts justly; even if this means that one does not know that the action performed was just. This initial aporia of justice is aimed at the notion of just rules; however, it does not mean that it is impossible to act justly by adhering to a set of rules. Rather, what Derrida argues is that it is not the set of rules that makes the action just, but rather a stroke of chance that means that the laws coincide with justice for a particular action in a particular moment.
The second aporia of justice identified by Derrida is that to act justly, one needs to make a conscious decision. A conscious decision involves a type of processing or calculating. Derrida suggests that a decision that does not pass the test of the undecidable cannot be just. The undecidable is defined by Derrida (2002, 252) as not merely the oscillation or tension between two decisions. Undecidable -this is the experience of that which, though foreign and heterogeneous to the order of the calculable and the rule, must [doit] nonetheless -it is of duty [devoir] that one must speak -deliver itself over to the impossible decision while taking account of law and rules.
The notion of the undecidable is used as a means of illuminating the process that is necessary to make a just decision. Derrida suggests that a decision that is not undecidable is not free; it may be lawful, but it can never be just. For Derrida, there is an impossibility of free and responsible just decisions (Derrida 2002). This is illustrated as Derrida (2002, 253) suggests, [a]t no moment can a decision be said to be presently or fully just: either it has not yet been made according to a rule, and nothing allows one to call it just, or it has already followed a rule whether given, received, confirmed preserved or reinvented -which, in its turn, nothing guarantees absolutely; and, moreover, if it were guaranteed, the decision would have turned back to calculation and one could not call it just.
Derrida here argues that a just decision cannot be made with reference to a rule; it cannot be calculated. This argument is a direct attack of Kant's notion of justice and simultaneously an attack on the law as a set of rules. Kant's conception of justice is heavily reliant on adhering to certain rules in certain circumstances (Weinrib 2014). Derrida is suggesting that one cannot be reliant on rules, since relying on rules means that a calculation has taken place instead of a just action. There is some form of deliberation that needs to take place for an action to be labelled as just. However, all decisions end up turning towards a form of calculation. This is due to the suspension of the calculation or set of rules/laws that is both required and impossible to make a just decision. Thus, one cannot make the free decision that being just requires.
Finally, the third aporia that Derrida identifies is that there is a paradox located in the process of making a just decision. Derrida claims "a just decision is always required immediately, right away, as quickly as possible" (Derrida 2002, 255). However, to act justly one has to deliberate. Justice cannot wait. This means that it cannot deliberate on the infinite and unlimited rules and knowledge that would be needed to justify itself. The immediacy of the just decision is due to the disruption that is made to the previous systems of deliberation that preceded it. This results in a notion of justice that requires calculation while being incalculable, and requires time and deliberation while simultaneously being immediate. Thus, one decides through deliberation this decision cannot be just as it is not immediate. This leads Derrida to the conclusion that just decisions are in fact acts of complete madness and that we can never know when we are being just (Derrida 2002). Ultimately, Derrida shows that just decisions can be made, but they are only done through some form of madness or complete luck because they ought to be impulsive. Without referring to a rule, making a just decision requires an act of madness as a decision will be made without any cognisance of justice. It will be a decision that is just by mere chance rather than by the aim of being just. Derrida's notion of justice is crucial to his critique of divine violence as he likens divine violence to justice. This critique also reveals how justice operates at a different level to law as it goes beyond a set of calculable rules. Thus, justice is not embedded within law as is so often suggested, instead justice is beyond law. This transcendence of law by justice will continue to appear in Benjamin's notion of divine violence.
Derrida's basic critique of Benjamin's theory leans on his deconstruction of justice as it states that because divine violence, like justice, is so elusive, it can be used to justify all kinds of horrendous acts of violence (Zacharias 2007). Derrida's reading of divine violence leads to him create a clear link between justice and divine violence. This is seen in Derrida's (2002, 291) description of divine violence as he states that [d]ivine violence is the most just, the most historic, the most revolutionary, the most decidable or the most deciding. Yet, as such, it does not lend itself to any human determination, to any knowledge or decidable "certainty" on our part. It is never known in itself, "as such", but only in its "effects" and its effects are "incomparable." They do not lend themselves to any conceptual generalization. There is no certainty (Gewissheit) or determinant knowledge except in the realm of mythic violence -that is to say, of law, that is, of the historical undecidable. "For only mythical violence, not divine, will be recognizable as such with any certainty, unless it be in incomparable effects…". This quotation clearly illustrates the similarities that Derrida sees between justice and divine violence. Through an illumination of these similarities, Derrida suggests that the fleetingness and unknowable quality of justice and divine violence make any claim for divine intervention highly problematic. The conflation of divine violence and justice is evident in Derrida's paper when he replaces the term "divine violence" with "divine justice" (Derrida 2002), which once again illustrates that he regards divine violence as having very similar, if not identical, epistemological characteristics to that of justice. Derrida's deconstruction of justice reveals that the law is not an adequate indicator of justice. Justice is beyond the law and not inherently entwined with it. Thus, merely acting according to the law is not a sufficient indicator of acting justly (Derrida 2002). For Derrida, justice requires compliance with some sort of universal rule or calculation that is simultaneously necessary and impossible (Rosenfeld 2017). This makes it easy for the law to claim that they are upholding justice even when its acts seem completely contradictory to this. Derrida's pivotal turn is in his argument that the incomprehensible nature of justice also applies to divine violence. The way in which Derrida conceives of divine violence makes it as elusive as justice; ultimately one can never know what is or is not divine violence (Derrida 2002). This form of argumentation is a perfect example of Derrida's method of deconstruction, which makes what was once stable unstable. Derrida's destabilisation of divine violence reveals the dangerous potential of divine action, just as his destabilisation of justice illuminates the muddied foundations of law. The notion of the divine can be reinterpreted to support acts of tremendous violence as much as it can be used to support divine justice. Derrida demonstrates this naturalisation of divine violence with the example of The Final Solution when he warns that "[w]hat I find the most redoubtable, perhaps most unbearable in this text, is the temptation that it would leave open to think the Holocaust as an uninterpretable manifestation of divine violence" (Derrida 2002, 298).
Since divine violence annihilates and kills without bloodshed, it is said to be acting for the sake of the living. However, who is or is not included in the category of "living" becomes problematic and is subject to interpretation. Derrida's sensitivity to law, justice and violence is relevant when examining other historical examples such as the legitimacy of colonisation and the legal system of apartheid; violence and force were legitimised through the law that permitted violence and the dehumanisation of black lives (Fanon 2004). The manner in which the notion of divine violence is interpreted can be used to justify and legitimate horrendous acts of violence such as colonialism and the Holocaust. Once again, Derrida naturalises divine violence to expose its dangers. This ultimately causes Derrida to condemn Benjamin's reasoning as being "too Heideggerian, too messianico-Marxist or archeo-eschatological" (Derrida 2002, 298). This condemnation of Benjamin explicitly points to the major flaws found in Benjamin's notion of divine violence.
Derrida's notion of justice illustrates why divine violence is simultaneously messianic and Marxist. This is all found in the epistemic problem of divine violence. It is through Benjamin's notion of divine violence that anyone is able to appeal to the concept to justify horrendous acts of violence. This malleability of Benjamin's divine violence opens it up to interpretative violence. Benjamin allows for human actions to be categorised under the banner of divine violence, but Derrida argues that one can never know if an action is in fact divine violence. By allowing humans to utilise divine violence for emancipation, Benjamin creates a terrifying method of justification for all acts of violence. Benjamin's grafting together the notions of the messianic and the general strike creates a notion of divine violence that extends too far for Derrida. Divine violence can be appealed to to justify all forms of violence, since one can never know if a particular act of violence is one with Benjamin's divine quality in the same manner that one can never know that an act is just. By deconstructing divine violence, Derrida removes the divine aspect of this type of violence and naturalises it. This is due to the unknowable aspect of divine violence; thus, it is Derrida's warning that deflates divine violence to a different form of human violence. Derrida aims to limit divine violence to the realm of the divine to avoid the notion of divine violence being used as a means of justifying acts of political violence.
Derrida's objection to Benjamin's divine violence is the most significant to overcome before one is able to adequately use divine violence as a means of achieving political emancipation. Butler needs to respond to Derrida's objection if she wants to use Benjamin's notion of divine violence in her political philosophy. Butler turns to Benjamin and divine violence due to her interest in the ways that lives resist the systematic oppression of the state (Loizidou 2007). Divine violence is a notion appealed to by Butler to conceive of liberal emancipation from the coercive violence of law as well as from more general forms of systemic violence. The notion of divine violence has a logic that extends beyond the law, which is appealing to Butler in that she seeks emancipation from systemic oppression of which coercive law is seen as a major aspect. Thus, divine violence becomes a tool for emancipation that Butler (2006) is interested in wielding. However, Derrida's warning that Benjamin's notion of divine violence has the potential to be used to justify extreme acts of violence needs to be responded to for Butler to justify her continued use of divine violence in their work. Without being able to respond to this critique, divine violence ought to be relocated to the realm of the divine. Butler's response to Derrida hinges on the notion of non-violence. This can be seen as Butler responds to Derrida by suggesting that divine violence is non-violent (Butler 2020). Butler's turn to non-violence stems from Monique Wittig as her influence (Karhu 2016). If divine violence is indeed non-violent, then it would not be able to be used in the manner that Derrida envisions. Thus, if divine violence is non-violent violence, then it does not have the potential to justify acts of mortifying violence. Instead, the potential of divine violence can be re-evaluated, and it is here that Butler sees the usefulness of divine violence in the achievement of liberal emancipation. In Butler's examination of divine violence and how it can be used to gain emancipation from institutionalised law, she demonstrates concern about Derrida's warnings. Butler must demonstrate that divine violence is non-violent even though annihilation is possible. The author displays true concern here and attempts to overcome this obstacle with the turn towards the theological line in Benjamin's "Critique of violence" (Butler 2012). However, even after making their argument that divine violence is non-violent, Butler's concern about the annihilation of divine violence reappears. This is seen in a self-evaluation of their argument where they state that "[m]y suggestion that divine violence could very well be related to this technique of 'non-violent' civil governance is not a popular one, since the sudden breakage at the end of the essay portends a violence of another order" (Butler 2020, 129).
This quote illustrates the fact that Butler is indeed aware that Benjamin's notion of divine violence is not non-violent, rather it is explicitly violent. Furthermore, the quote demonstrates the great difficulty that Butler has with overcoming the critique of divine violence given by Derrida. Following their argument through the commandment, Butler (2012) raises the concern that Benjamin may indeed still be offering a justification for violence outside the realm of legality. As Markus Gunneflo (2012) suggests, Butler is concerned that Benjamin does not explicitly state whether one is obligated to oppose all forms of legal violence. In Benjamin's essay, it is unclear what the scope of his theory of divine violence is. Is Benjamin wanting to rid society of all forms of legitimacy that stem from the law, or does he have a recognition for the importance of legitimacy of the law? Butler's concern stems from the ambiguity of Benjamin's essay. For this reason, Butler (2020) does not follow Benjamin to his destructive anarchistic conclusion. However, Butler must be seen as being acutely aware of the potential that divine violence has to be destructive and violent.
Butler claims that divine violence as non-violence still holds great revolutionary potential. This argument is made by turning towards the theological and examining the true nature of a divine command. It is through the commandment that Butler will justify their argument of the non-violent violence that is divine violence (Gunneflo 2012). However, I argue that the argument put forward by Butler is not convincing. This is due to Butler leaning on a liberal and peripheral understanding of Jewish law to bolster their response to Derrida. Butler's argument that divine violence is not annihilating in an absolute sense will be shown to illustrate that divine violence has the ability to be annihilating in a relative manner; however, it will not make this a necessary condition for divine violence. Thus, divine violence will still have the potential to annihilate in an absolute sense. This potential is what Derrida warns us of. Following this, I argue that Butler's radical egalitarianism is not sufficient to ensure that divine violence strikes at only mere life. It is for these reasons that I find Butler's response to Derrida unconvincing. Butler (2012) begins their response to Derrida by posing a question. They ask whether there is a form of violence that is non-violent and can result in the destruction of coercive law. Butler believes that the answer to this question is found in Benjamin's notion of divine violence as Benjamin himself describes divine violence as law-destroying. It is through attempting to illustrate that divine violence is non-violent and yet still destructive, that Butler attempts to respond to Derrida's critique of divine violence. To argue that divine violence is non-violent, Butler initially focuses on the bloodless characteristic of divine violence. Butler follows the line of reasoning in Benjamin's "Critique of violence", which suggests that since divine violence is bloodless; it does not strike the souls of the living (Butler 2006). For Butler, this bloodlessness of divine violence means that it is a type of violence that is not enacted against human beings; instead, divine violence is enacted on the legal subject, which is the subject that is forged by the law (Gunneflo 2012). The possibility of divine violence being non-violent is found in this bloodless characteristic of divine violence (Butler 2012). It is important to note that Butler does not arbitrarily assume the existence of this non-violent form of violence. Benjamin himself allows for the possibility of non-violent resolution. However, this tends to take place when dealing with objects (Benjamin 1996). Benjamin does describe the proletariat general strike as non-violent. However, it is non-violent only because it seeks to destroy the ends/means continuum that we use to define violence. In this manner, the violence of the general strike is described as non-violent as it is extra-legal. Divine violence goes beyond the framework of violence that the law provides. However, violence, destruction and annihilation are part of the reality of the general strike and divine violence (Benjamin 1996;Sinnerbrink 2006). This is the problem with the definition of violence in general that Butler identifies, grapples with, but does not overcome in The Force of Non-violence. Violence itself is an elusive concept and it is not pinned down by Butler. Divine violence is bloodless, but it can result in the complete annihilation of human subjects, which was seen in the example of the radical elimination of Korah and his community given by Benjamin (1996). Butler needs to be able to overcome this obstacle for her argument to have any significant weight. Acknowledging the example of Korah, Butler (2012) demonstrates that there is a selectiveness in who is described as "living". Korah and his community were annihilated, but this violence was seen to be against mere life for the sake of the living (Benjamin 1996). This annihilation of Korah, even in a non-violent conception, sounds extremely sacrificial. The tension here between non-violence and annihilation needs to be overcome for Butler to maintain their argument that divine violence is non-violent. To escape this tension, Butler (2012) turns to the divine commandments as it is seen as the communication of divine violence.
Butler acknowledges that divine violence has the ability to annihilate; however, they suggest that it is never annihilating in an absolute sense. Rather, divine violence is annihilating only in a relative sense (Butler 2006). If Butler proves this, then they can suggest that even though there is an annihilating aspect of divine violence, even this is non-violent, or at least not violent towards the living. Butler argues that non-violence is a pure means as it is a form of ungovernable critique. Non-violence has no end in mind; it is open-ended, and it is in this manner that non-violence can be likened to divine violence (Butler 2020). To reinforce this ungovernability of divine violence and non-violence, Butler turns towards the commandments. Founded in Benjamin's interpretation of Jewish law, the commandments are the vector for the communication of divine violence (Kellogg 2013). Butler acknowledges that Benjamin has a unique view of Jewish tradition and therefore of Jewish law. Benjamin and Butler do not have the view of the vengeful God of Judaism; rather, the vocalisation of the commandments is seen as being separated from enforceability (Gunneflo 2012). The commandments are interpreted as a form of law that is dramatically different from state law. There is no binding force behind the commandments, and they are a form of law that is not enforceable (Butler 2012). There is a force that is exercised through the commandments that does not have the mark of guilt attached to it. This once again demonstrates that it is the divine that has the ability to destroy the mythic. The commandments do not have a police force, and they do not require a certain position to be taken. Rather, they allow for grappling and interpretation to take place. This is done in a non-coercive manner and results in true freedom (Butler 2012). It is in this ungovernable grappling that Butler links the notion of non-violence to the commandments and ultimately to divine violence (Franco 2014). This wrestling can be seen in the example of the commandment used by Benjamin: "Thou shalt not kill". When looking at this commandment, one is unable to derive a judgement from the deed; thus, no form of judgement of this deed can be known in advance. This commandment does not exist as a condemnation of killing, rather, it exists as a guideline for one's actions. You as the individual have to wrestle with this commandment and come to a conclusion for yourself. It is through this wrestling that one has the option to ignore the commandment (Benjamin 1996). Benjamin has the notion of self-defence in mind here, but this could be pushed further. One could ignore the commandment in other circumstances, such as war or even in revolution. What is important for Butler is not the outcome of the commandment, but how it is given. There is no enforcement of the commandment. It is non-violently given for the individual to grapple and come to terms with. This is completely different to the notion of law that Benjamin suggests is founded in violence of a mythic kind (Benjamin 1996). Thus, a divine commandment is non-coercive and since it is the commandments through which divine violence is communicated, divine violence must also be non-violent (Gunneflo 2012). Butler interprets Benjamin's use of the commandment not to kill as a means of distinguishing what is a life that is set apart from mere life. It is here that Butler then suggests that non-violent violence is violence that strikes at the heart of mythic law and causes the expiation of guilt that the law binds to us. Through this distinction, Butler aims to demonstrate that divine violence can be non-violent, and that this non-violence aims to destroy the legal subject that mythic violence created. Divine violence in this interpretation is annihilating in a relative sense. It is through the commandment and the manner in which it illustrates that active critique can be destructive to mythic law, that Butler (2012) argues the non-violence of divine violence. This is pushed even further as Butler likens the person struggling with the commandments to the community of the general strike. Thus, if the grappling with the commandments is an act of non-violence, then the same can be achieved through the non-violent general strike that seeks to critique, and through critique it seeks to destroy (Gunneflo 2012).
The interpretation of Jewish law used by Benjamin and Butler is liberal and peripheral. This differs from most mainstream interpretations of Jewish law from the Middle Ages to the contemporary period. Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (1138-1204), more well known as Maimonides, does not give the same freedom for grappling with God's commandments. 1 This is especially the case when it comes to the commandment to not murder, as Maimonides suggests that one ought to sacrifice one's own life when in the situation of being forced to kill or to die. Thus, Maimonides suggests that one ought to die instead of breaking God's commandments, which clearly shows the force behind that commandment. This is completely opposed to both Butler's and Benjamin's take on the commandments. Through an examination of Maimonides' interpretation of commandments, it becomes clear that there is no allowance for grappling or critique in certain commandments, such as the commandment not to kill, the commandment against idolatry and the commandment forbidding certain sexual relations. A contemporary interpretation of Jewish law coincides with that of Maimonides as Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan suggests that God's commandments are indeed binding in Judaism. In The Handbook of Jewish Thought published in 1979, 2 Kaplan suggests that the law is indeed binding and that it is only a few people in each generation that have the ability to grapple with the law. These people are the great rabbis of each generation such as Maimonides. Kaplan further reinforces the mainstream interpretation of Jewish law that illustrates that there is very little freedom to be found in Jewish commandments. This reveals that both Butler and Benjamin have a liberal interpretation of Jewish law and the enforcement of commandments. Their interpretation is on the periphery of the religious tradition. The issue here is not just that Butler gives an account of Jewish law that is peripheral, rather it is that they justify the use of divine violence through this interpretation. It is the liberal interpretation of Jewish law that allows Butler to suggest that divine violence is both non-violent and accessible to the masses. If the commandment is given in a non-coercive manner, as Butler suggests, then divine violence must subsequently be non-coercive and non-violent. This is due to the commandment being a vector for divine violence. Here, Butler manipulates the commandment to fit her argument that divine violence is non-violent. The peripheral nature of her interpretation of divine violence clearly demonstrates this. Furthermore, this demonstrates once again the malleability of Benjamin's divine violence and its openness to interpretation. For Butler, this opens it up to be interpreted as non-violent. However, this does not prohibit violent and dangerous interpretations of divine violence. Furthermore, it still does not deal with the annihilation aspect of divine violence. Instead, Butler illustrates that divine violence can occur without annihilation, but they are not able to suggest that divine violence will never be accompanied by annihilation. Thus, Butler is only able to suggest that there may be a possibility for divine violence to be non-violent, but they do not demonstrate that this is a necessary condition of divine violence. Butler, by using Benjamin's interpretation of the commandment, allows for an active use of divine violence in the form of non-violent critique. Non-violence can then be used to critique the use of force by the state through the law, while not seeking to delegitimise state authority altogether (Franco 2014).
Relying on the bloodless characteristic of divine violence bares Butler little fruit. Derrida argues that the bloodlessness of divine violence does not prevent the extermination of human beings. This is due to the ability for annihilation to take place without spilling blood. I used the example of Korah to show that this was the case earlier; however, Derrida chooses a more controversial example of bloodless annihilation. Derrida (2002) suggests that the bloodlessness of divine violence can lead one to interpret the Holocaust as an act of divine violence. Here, one is able to create an illusion of the processes of exterminating the European Jews as expiation, since many of these processes were bloodless. Extermination methods such as gas chambers and cremation ovens can be seen as an example of bloodless forms of annihilation that Jews were subjected to by the Nazis (Derrida 2002). This interpretation of the Holocaust as an act of divine violence could be made stronger when one views the less literal interpretation of the bloodlessness of divine violence. As I have mentioned above, Benjamin uses this to suggest that divine violence strikes mere life or the legal subject and 1 For Maimonides' take on the commandment not to kill, see ben Maimon (1965) on the foundations of the Torah. 2 For information on Rabbi Kaplan's interpretations of Jewish law, see Kaplan (1979).
not the souls of the living. Thus, the human being is deflated by mythic violence into the notion of a legal subject. This deflation can be used to dehumanise certain groups of people and in so doing suggest that they in fact do not bleed. For example, the Holocaust can be interpreted as an act of divine violence as one of the many ways in which people were exterminated in concentration camps was in gas chambers. Killing in this manner is bloodless in a literal sense. However, due to the dehumanisation of the Jews during this time, these acts of violence can be interpreted as bloodless in a figurative sense as Jews were not seen to be fully human by the Nazi regime. This is summed up perfectly in the words of Shakespeare's character Shylock when he asks: Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? (Shakespeare 1916).
His most powerful exclamation references blood: "If you prick us, do we not bleed?". It is here that one can see the true danger of the bloodlessness of divine violence as one is able to determine who bleeds in this metaphorical sense. During the Holocaust, it became abundantly clear that the annihilation of Jews was an extermination of non-beings from the perspective of the Nazis. However, this is not an isolated event as dehumanisation was a weapon wielded by colonialism and imperialism (Fanon 2008). The bloodlessness of divine violence allows for this wicked interpretation to take place to further justify violence. It becomes clear that one only needs to dehumanise the victim to claim that divine violence has occurred. This dehumanisation has occurred on numerous occasions throughout history and still poses a major threat in contemporary society (Fanon 2004). To prevent this, Butler (2020) aims to have a notion of non-violence that is committed to a radical egalitarianism. This would in theory prevent any person or peoples from being excluded. However, radical egalitarianism can facilitate this process of dehumanisation as it only protects those that are perceived as being human. It does not guarantee the prevention of the dehumanisation of certain individuals and groups. This means that the notion of divine violence can still be used to justify certain acts of violence directed at these dehumanised groups by those that would want to commit them. This once again demonstrates the malleability of Benjamin's notion of divine violence. Furthermore, Derrida argues that one can still annihilate without spilling blood, thus, one can once again claim an act of divine violence. It is these wicked interpretation of the notion of divine violence that Derrida warns of. The issue in Butler's use of divine violence is that she opens human access to divine violence. This access is dangerous as it can be used by others to justify acts of violence. Butler's reliance on the notion of divine violence carries all these same dangers that Derrida illuminates. The problem of bloodlessness and dehumanisation is only an issue due to Benjamin allowing for divine violence to be committed by humans. In doing so, Benjamin opens divine violence up to interpretation. If divine violence was left solely to the divine, then this would not be a problem, since the divine would have the ability to identify the souls of the living. However, since Benjamin engages in a form of theological materialism, he needs divine violence to be accessible to humans to be able to generate change (Rae 2019). It is this practicality of Benjamin's divine violence that causes the interpretation issues found above. As long as there is an aspect of annihilation that is justified by divine violence, it is a concept that remains dangerous. This generates the question: is divine violence a form of logic that can be enacted by humans, or should it be left to the realm of the divine? The danger of divine violence is something that Butler themself acknowledges. However, they are unable to overcome this danger through their response to Derrida. It is for this reason that I suggest that Butler's aim to use the notion of divine violence in the process of political emancipation is in fact dangerous as it does not prohibit the use of divine violence in an extreme and perversely violent manner. Thus, the notion of divine violence ought to be suspended in the realm of the divine until an adequate response to Derrida is made. Butler's use of Benjamin's divine violence is interesting as Butler attempts to sanitise his theory. This attempt to sanitise divine violence has not been successful. Butler aims to demonstrate that divine violence is non-violent in a response to Derrida's critique of the notion. If divine violence is non-violent, then it would not be able to be used as a means to justify acts of violence. Instead, divine violence would become an emancipatory tool for the masses. Butler seeks to make this argument firstly through the interpretation of a commandment. I argued that Butler's interpretation of Jewish law is peripheral and is merely used to bolster her argument that divine violence is non-violent. However, it remains merely an interpretation, which means that there are other interpretations of Jewish law that do not allow for the same grappling and critique that Butler has in mind here. This was illustrated through the examination of two dominant interpretations of the commandment for Maimonides and Rabbi Kaplan. Following this argument, Butler turns to the bloodless characteristic of divine violence. The bloodlessness of divine violence is appealed to to illustrate that divine violence cannot strike at the souls of the living. This would suggest that divine violence would be annihilating only in a relative sense. I argued that this sanitisation of the bloodlessness of divine violence does not restrict divine violence to being annihilating in a relative sense. Instead, this argument illustrates that divine violence could be non-violent, but non-violence is not a necessary condition of divine violence. Thus, Butler's arguments, while well intended, do not go far enough to prevent divine violence from being violent. Divine violence is now seen to be able to be non-violent, but this is not a necessity. Thus, Butler's response to Derrida is not far-reaching enough and is therefore inadequate. Until an adequate response is given to Derrida's warning against divine violence, it should be repelled into the realm of the divine.