Necroeconomics: Violence, Law, and Twenty-First-Century Plunder Available to Purchase

The chapter sets the context for the discussion of human rights in the chapters that follow via a recalibration of how we understand violence in relation to law. Colombia is an extreme example of how the violence of armed repression intersects with less visible violence inherent to the ordinary operation of capitalism. The myth of a neutral, natural legal order conceals these deeper dynamics of violence, with liberal legal narratives of freedom and equality embodying moral reference points that are at odds with the political economy within which they are asserted. Yet while classical liberal thinkers attempted to resolve these contradictions by separating the principles for moral and economic action, neoliberalism was from its inception both a moral and a legal doctrine. With the globalization of neoliberal legality, the very meanings of democracy and ethics have been transformed.