Self-defense : a philosophy of violence
(Book)

Originally published in French as Se defendre: Une philosophie de la violence © Editions LA DÉCOUVERTE, Paris, France, 2017.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [183]-250).

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. That those subject to the most violence--the enslaved, the colonized, the oppressed--have been forcibly made defenseless raises, for any movement of liberation, a question: Can violence be used in the interests of self-defense? Philosopher Elsa Dorlin looks across the global history of the left to trace the politics, philosophy, and ethics of self-defense. With a historical gaze that captures slave revolts, British suffragists' training in jujitsu, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to the Black Panther Party, queer neighborhood patrols, and Black Lives Matter, Dorlin discovers a "martial ethics of the self": a practice in which violent self-defense is the only means for the oppressed to ensure survival and to build a livable future. --Back cover.

Translated from the French.

Winner of the Prix Frantz Fanon in 2018 and Prix De L'Ecrit Social in 2019.