The two monographs under review signal the renewal of scholarly interest in intersections between legal and cultural forms of representation. Rather than drawing on the existing interdisciplinary fields of critical legal studies or critical race theory, however, these two authors construct their own divergent approaches to the study of representation/discourse and the law.
Divided into five parts and thirteen chapters, Schillings’s lengthy book explores the evolution of the concept of hostis humani generis (the enemy of all humankind) in philosophical and literary texts, such as in treatises on piracy and in novels by James Fenimore Cooper, Dashiell Hammett, Richard Wright, Kurt Vonnegut, and Mohsin Hamid. Developed by philosopher Augustine of Hippo and jurist Hugo Grotius, who both also contributed to just war theory, the concept of hostis humani generis, Schillings argues, serves as a kind of legal fiction to justify the violence a sovereign power or nation-state perpetrates in order...
