Abstract:
This article will reflect on the role of legitimate and authorised violence in state-making. This
violence in the name of the good defines the state (Benjamin’s law-making violence) by the
exclusion of others (Benjamin 1996). Law-making violence together with the violence that
coerces or binds [religare] the public into a common understanding of the good (Benjamin’s
law-maintaining violence) is at the exclusion of other interpretations of the good (Benjamin
1996). As the law-making and law-maintaining violence of the state is always at the expense of
the excluded other, the excluded other will produce a counter violence of difference seeking a
legitimate place within the common space of the republic (Benjamin’s divine violence). What
is the church’s role in such a context of violence? Is the church’s role to help clarify and clearly
define the good that will bind [religare] the citizens into a stronger and more prosperous and
peaceful state – onward Christian soldiers marching as to war? Or is there another calling, to
be disciples of Christ – with the Cross of Jesus going on before – and enter the space of violence
beyond the knowledge of good and evil as peacemakers? These questions will be examined
by bringing into dialogue Žižek’s (1997) interpretation of Christianity with Derrida’s (2002)
interpretation of hospitality, specifically in the violent South African context.
