Nigga Theory: Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity in the Substantive Criminal Law
+(,121/,1( Citation: 12 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 9 2014-2015 Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline (http://heinonline.org) Wed Sep 16 18:08:38 2015 -- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at http://heinonline.org/HOL/License -- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text. -- To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope of your HeinOnline license, please use: https://www.copyright.com/ccc/basicSearch.do? &operation=go&searchType=0 &lastSearch=simple&all=on&titleOrStdNo=1546-7619 Nigga Theory: Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity in the Substantive Criminal Law Jody Armour* INTRODUCTION Po' niggers can't have no luck- Nigger Jim, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn1 Some will find the N-word in my title jagged-edged and hurtful. Words can wound: more than mere vehicles for the expression of ideas or the transfer of information, words are deeds--acts with consequences-and the words "nigger" and "nigga" are two of the most violent and blood-soaked verbal acts in the English language. Nevertheless, used with the precision and reticence of a surgeon's hands, these vicious epithets can also suture the places where blood flows. In that spirit, in profane language picked for its unparaphrasable power to focus attention on the implications of moral condemnation for racial justice and political solidarity, I use these jagged epithets here as part of a metaphoric redescription, in racial terms, of the criminal law's ancient subjective culpability or mens rea requirement. In this essay, in other words, a "nigga" is a metaphor for black wickedness, black mens rea, which I will use to probe the intersection of morality, race, and class in matters of blame and punishment and politics.
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