Crime, the Negation of Right, and the Problem of European Colonial Consciousness

Abstract

This chapter develops an acute sense of the contingency that necessarily unfolds in the wake of Hegel’s account of personhood, specifically in terms of the structure of contract. In the pursuit of one’s own interests in terms of property, Hegel’s analysis leads to the inevitability of exchange amongst persons (contract). The chapter aims to demonstrate that because contracts are contingent upon persons’ self-interests they are prone to violation: one may just as well respect their contract as violate it. Right, framed in terms of contract, dialectically mutates into wrong and crime. The chapter that the natural dimension of the individual, understood as immediate drive etc., is crucial to criminal violations of right. Subsequently, the chapter develops a sustained critical reading of Hegel on this speculative rendering of the structure of crime. Drawing from key theorists in postcolonial and critical race studies, the chapter accentuates the problematic colonial impulse permeating Hegel’s position, exposes the ways in which it grounds criminality in the ‘natural’, ‘metaphysical’ depth of the juridical subject.