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The Constitution of Violence Through the Language of Law: Legal Hermenutics in Second‐Century Roman Egypt
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 December 2018
Abstract
This essay examines the linguistic anthropological themes emergent in Violence in Roman Egypt (2013). Viewing law as a discourse, it explores how language is constitutive of law and is the primary modality of acting upon, and enacting the world(s) that it shapes, giving meaning to the lives of people who engage each other in and through it. Violence petitions in second‐century Egypt are a fundamental mode of sense making and problem solving, calling on legal authorities to interpret claims of iniuria, or legal battery, into a language that they understand and remedy. In doing so, law changes the discourse of violence, specifically, and social life, more broadly.
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- Review Essay
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- Copyright
- Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2015
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