Pre-Emptive Legal Violence: Colonial Continuities and Racial Formations
Seminar by Prof. Brenna Bhandar, visiting professor at MemoryLab.
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Date: 02 MARCH 2026 from 17:00 to 19:00
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Event location: Aula Gambi, Department of History and Cultures, Piazza San Giovanni in Monte 2
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Type: Cluster 5 - Transcultural Spaces and Memories
In this talk, Prof. Bhandar explores pre-emptive violence as a legal technology used to foreclose alternate futures from taking hold. Pre-emptive violence appears across land law doctrines from the 19th century settler colony to the criminalization of anti-colonial resistance, and permeates the globalized racial present of counter-terrorism and securitization. Pre-emptive violence is a key mechanism to control the political time of refusal and resistance.