Violence and its interpretations: towards a semiotic theory of state power

ABSTRACT

We propose a semiotic theory of the state via an account of deadly physical violence and its variable interpretation. A sociological examination of the racialized investigatory traffic stop in the United States provides the location for a theorization that departs from the Althusserian account of state and subject, and from 'realist' and 'cultural' theories of state power. We offer a different account of the relationship of state power to violence, one focused on the relationship between action and its future interpretation as a primary location of state power, which is conceptualized as a pantemporal process of violence and its interpretation.

KEYWORDS:

• Political sociology
• Louis Althusser
• Max Weber
• police violence
• racialization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In this paper, our language sometimes veers towards the distinction between ‘internal’ power relations of meaning in interaction, and ‘external’ power relations of force, materiality, etc. However, our goal is, in part, to carefully attempt to move beyond the rather frustrating language of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ power relations, by compelling semiotic social theory to accurately describe a situation in which the ‘ultimate externality’ (death) is a clear possibility, and various kinds of coercion and discipline are being pursued.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Abigail Cary Moore

Abigail Cary Moore is a Ph.D. student in sociology and a Jefferson Fellow at the University of Virginia. She received a B.A. in English Literature and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Yale University in 2015. Her research interests include social and political theory, culture, religion, and semiotics. She can be reached at [email protected].

Isaac Ariail Reed

Isaac Ariail Reed is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Interpretation and Social Knowledge: On the use of theory in the human sciences and the co-editor of Social Theory Now. In 2015 he received the Lewis Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting from the American Sociological Association. He can be reached at [email protected]